Jesus Springs: Evangelical Capitalism and the Fate of an American City

In this illuminating debut history, Colorado Springs, Colo., serves as a microcosm for how evangelicalism has accrued cultural power over the past 70-odd years. Historian Schultz begins in the 1940s and ’50s, when evangelical leaders fused faith to Cold War–era patriotic values, birthing a militaristic evangelicalism that saw believers as “stewards and defenders of a Christian” and American heritage. The era saw small towns like Colorado Springs attract evangelicals drawn to their traditional values, growing economy, and relatively cheap prices. Colorado Springs, in particular, drew enterprising evangelicals who built campuses for ministries like Young Life, Navigators, and Focus on the Family, and helped set up institutions like the U.S. Air Force Academy, marrying piety, patriotism, and power (military leaders “loudly proclaimed that good soldiers were good Christians and vice versa”). The evangelicalism that emerged in Colorado Springs—and the conflation of “Christianity and patriotism” that distinguished it from mainline Protestantism, which had increasingly begun to “emphasize America’s religious pluralism”—helped it evolve into a social movement which, the author convincingly shows, has played a key role in fueling today’s Christian nationalism. The result is a revealing window into the roots of a movement that has reshaped American religion and politics. (Sept.)