Colorado Springs displaced Wheaton as the center of American evangelicalism.

Evidence

IF THERE WAS A CENTRAL HUB TO THE SPRAWLING network that was twenty-first-century American evangelicalism, it was Colorado Springs. The “Wheaton of the West,” Colorado Springs had displaced the original Wheaton, a center of a more genteel, establishment evangelicalism, and had surpassed Lynchburg and Orange County in terms of significance in the evangelical world. In Colorado Springs, the militarization of mainstream evangelicalism was on full display. And from its evangelical strongholds, the city’s faithful brought their militant faith directly to the US military. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 465

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the geographic-institutional argument that echoes how religious movements concentrate in hub cities; connects to broader work on evangelical infrastructure and its military entanglement.