Evangelical institutional growth in Colorado Springs was tied to military expansion.

Evidence

The entrenchment of evangelicalism in Colorado Springs coincided with the growth of the military in the region. In 1954, the United States Air Force Academy was established in Colorado Springs. The city would eventually house three air force bases, an army fort, and the North American Air Defense Command. In the 1960s, the Nazarene Bible College opened its doors, and soon an array of evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist churches, colleges, ministries, nonprofits, and businesses took root. Lured by local tax breaks and drawn to the growing epicenter of evangelical power, nearly one hundred Christian parachurch organizations sprouted up within a five-mile vicinity of the academy, including Officers’ Christian Fellowship, the International Bible Society, Youth for Christ, the Navigators, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Christian Booksellers Association, Fellowship of Christian Cowboys, Christian Camping International, and, most significantly, Dobson’s Focus on the Family. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 466

Categorization

• XREF: The co-location of military bases and ~100 parachurch organizations supports the book’s core claim that military culture and evangelical culture became mutually constitutive.
• SEED: Angle: a map-based piece on how religious infrastructure clusters around military installations and what that institutional proximity does to both institutions.