King's of New York

...And it’s daunting...

...They want the real thing when they get there...

...From those inauspicious beginnings Harvard produced seven United States presidents, more than 40 Nobel laureates, and innumerable men and women of consequence, even if its future literate progeny had little use for Ministry to the Churches, illiterate or otherwise...

...No big surprise there...

...Yet humility remains the order of the day...

...Who would have predicted such a result at the outset...

...One of our greatest advantages is we’re not afraid of the truth,” Mills later noted when I told him what Hodge said...

...The Village Voice, for example, uncovered a disgruntled gay student who bemoaned the lack of a “progressive Christian movement” on campus and classmates who didn’t dig Brokeback Mountain...

...sePTeMbeR 2008 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR 27...

...The lack of interest in examining various philosophies or competing ideas objectively definitely led to some nutty thinking,” Nance, a talented singer-songwriter who will frequently stick around clubs in the Village to debate philosophy, religion, and politics with the hoi polloi after performing, explained...

...The question isn’t ‘What does Jesus say about the free market?’ It’s, ‘What is going to help us best alleviate suffering?’” This give-and-take atmosphere makes The King’s College a fascinating place for even a thoroughly secularized journalist to visit...

...In 1999 King’s College relaunched in the Empire State Building with 17 students...

...The King’s community is, I think, a mix of idealism and skepticism,” Olasky said...

...King’s senior Bryan Nance still shakes his head when he recalls the “Politically Incorrect Since 1971” T-shirts fellow students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University proudly donned, almost reveling in the irrelevance of their beliefs to those beyond the campus walls...

...An “education of faith and consequence,” as King’s prefers to call it, apparently is an attractive proposition...

...Christianity is based on the idea that you work on the principles and beliefs within and that is going to affect how you live out in the world, so it’s odd so many Christian colleges try to work from the outside behavior inward,” Olasky said...

...America is a liberty theme park...

...I don’t want this to sound mystical, but in twenty-five years at the University of Texas”—with a diverse faculty composed, he jokes, of liberals and radicals—“I never felt a calling like I’ve felt at King’s College...

...Yet, the school is hardly slouching toward Gomorrah...

...King’s students come to New York City to live out their convictions, which is why I firmly believe this could become one of the most influential religious institutions in the country...

...Pie throwing doesn’t count...

...They possess both smarts and intellectual courage...

...There is no mandatory chapel, yet students have a robust faith life with attendance at student-generated worship services and Bible study sessions rivaling or exceeding those at other religious schools...

...There have been unpleasant spots, though...

...Most infrastructure at schools has nothing to do with teaching students,” Mills said, adding that he believes King’s can learn from its competitors’ decades of mistakes, succeed where others have failed, and provide a superior education at a relatively low tuition...

...When you have a student body that doesn’t believe objective truth exists, they are going for the credential,” he said...

...Emphasizing principle rather than setting external standards seems to me to be much healthier and more in keeping with the Christian understanding...

...Faculty are required to sign “without mental reservation” a “Statement of Faith” affirming their belief in the Bible and, further, pledging themselves to “help fulfill the Great Commission in our generation, depending upon the Holy Spirit to guide and empower me...

...Enrollment has since jumped to nearly 300, with neo-pioneers from across the nation and 11 countries...

...Of course, to no small number of our blue-state brethren evangelical college student likely calls forth an image of a ragamuffin clad in a John 3:16 sandwich board hollering at passersby about the tortures that await them in Hell—perhaps for three transferable credits...

...dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches,” with a class of nine students a mere 16 years after settlers had arrived on a King’s chancellor J. Stanley Oakes sePTeMbeR 2008 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR 23 KInG’s of new yoRK much wilder frontier than what King’s faces in New York City—post-Giuliani, anyway...

...Visit the school, converse with them for yourself...

...It’s true: The average ACT score of the incoming class is 28, which puts King’s students in the top 90th percentile nationwide...

...g g established its heavenly presence above our leading city’s not so good earth...

...It’s not enough to go to a prestigious school...

...Walking through King’s halls, though, you’re as likely to hear debates over the relative merits of Benthamian utilitarianism or the latest superhero blockbuster as biblical doctrine, and the word you’ll hear more often than any other with regard to intellectual opponents is engagement...

...The discussion is well versed and polite, never devolving into demagoguery or dismissive invective, but at the same time firm and grounded...

...It is a model from which King’s would like to borrow a la carte: a large order of influence for In 1999 King’s College relaunched in the Empire State Building with 17 students...

...Secularists and religious liberals have apparently claimed New York City as their inviolable capital,” Stanley Kurtz wrote of the latter outrage in National Review at the time...

...The skittish insularity of many self-professed Christian colleges It doesn’t hurt that New York City is the kind of place where you could snap a picture of Jessica Simpson on your cell phone en route to hear Justice Breyer speak on constitutional law...

...If secularists do a better job of winning over the country, well, they’ve earned the right to set the national agenda...

...Only God can bring you closer to Himself...

...King’s charter, however, remained active and Oakes, sensing a providential moment, drew together key donors with his longtime cohorts at Campus Crusade for Christ in hopes of reviving the school as a place where ambitious Christians could have a closer, more meaningful encounter with the culture at large...

...Prospective students this year have been simultaneously offered slots at NYU, Brown, Duke, and Pepperdine...

...Something special is happening here...

...There is no cafeteria, no football stadium to maintain, no gym...

...Still, the students’ obvious dedication to the school mission proves Oakes’s vision was no pipe dream...

...Olasky recognizes the difficulty of entering the “paperocracy” the United States has become, in which so many evaluations of a prospective employee’s worth emanate from a few keywords on a résum...

...The New Testament talks about the difficulty of sowing seeds and while New York City certainly appears to be rocky soil, we’re nevertheless finding Gotham has proven more violable for King’s small but merry band of Christ disciples than any believer or nonbeliever probably ever suspected it could be...

...In C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, at various times, people ask of Aslan, ‘Is he safe?’ and the response is, ‘Well, no, he’s not safe, but he’s good.’ This is a good education, but it is not at all a safe education...

...While there is no air of elitism at King’s, it is clear these young men and women are elite...

...The Student Voice interviewed T. J. Bramblett, who was planning to attend Virginia Tech until he paid a visit to King’s at his grandmother’s behest...

...These are not students bereft of options slinking off to the only school that will take them...

...Still, administrators and students alike remained unbowed in the face of such galling temerity, and Gotham has proven more violable for King’s small but merry band of Christ disciples than any believer or nonbeliever probably ever suspected it could be...

...There is a precedent for this mad mission...

...There is no Underwater Basket-Weaving 101,” Randazzo assured...

...Check their backs for wires—no Stepford Students here...

...We’re here to make the best case for what we believe...

...the new generation of leaders, hold the slavish secularization—which is most certainly not the same as providing future theocrats training wheels...

...junior Hope Hodge said...

...Every time you set out to build a new institution, it is something of a mad mission,” the provost mused...

...That’s difficult, but it’s what we came here to learn to do...

...There is a moral component to the choice of location as well...

...How many secularized Ivy League schools would respectfully welcome its opponents to argue hot-button issues...

...When the school needs a theater for events, it rents one...

...To him, the social gospel embraced at King’s—students are involved in a series of volunteer and service projects—is a revelation...

...What starts in the city doesn’t end in the city and you can’t build a wall high enough to keep the world out even if it was right to build it—and it’s not...

...Of more consequence, a liberal member of the New York State Board of Regents led a barely veiled (and failed) effort in 2005 to deny the school accreditation against the positive recommendation of the Regents’ own Advisory Council, in part to protect dimwitted applicants to the school who might be tricked into believing they were attending Columbia University, which was, after all, also named King’s…two hundred years ago...

...I wanted to be able to open my mouth in front of people who disagreed with me without looking foolish...

...A handwritten quote from Touchstone magazine editor James Kushiner is posted in the student lounge: “A discipline won’t bring you closer to God...

...Otherwise, do what you know is right...

...For too long Christians have let themselves be stereotyped as rural city-avoiders who follow trends rather than set them,” one typical press release from the school reads...

...Exclamation marks in several different ink hues have been added in eager assent...

...However, they are Animal House-esque only if some director’s cut exists with scenes of John Belushi mentoring underprivileged youth and moderating intra-house theological debates...

...It’s true: our students are going to have to do things the old-fashioned way and earn the respect and trust of their employers,” Olasky said...

...in the business world, other schools are churning out classes of students with a sense of entitlement...

...So I’ve ended up feeling like maybe I was a little naïve before to just think, ‘I’m going to make this happen.’ At the same time, I actually feel like I’m becoming someone who can have a real impact...

...Students are well aware before 26 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR sePTeMbeR 2008 sHawn MacoMbeR they arrive that, as Oakes tells me, King’s “makes no apologies for the rigors of the program...

...Those kids quickly become disillusioned when they arrive in the real world and realize how challenging it is to distinguish oneself and succeed...

...Another brochure declares, “After a century in which many Christians have disengaged from the public square, we seek to enter it, declaring truth in a civil and persuasive manner...

...The school has taught its students to see through equivocation too well to do otherwise...

...We plan to train our side to compete vigorously, though...

...That year a land deal gone bad essentially ran the school out of existence, presumably forever...

...The day King’s reaches 850 students the school will run on tuition alone, freeing administrators to streamline operations and focus on educating students rather than constantly prostrating themselves for donations and running complex funding schemes like the “Leviathan Universities,” as Olasky calls them, currently do...

...But to be winsome and gracious and respectfully refute others’ ideas...

...We try to impart as few illusions to our students as possible...

...The students are of a similar mind...

...There is an offshoot to training clear-eyed students of such high caliber, however, one that is fairly novel in the world of higher education: to make the program work, The King’s College must practice what it preaches...

...It’s easy to spout ideology and orthodoxy and never bother listening to anyone else,” David Lapp, a junior, concurred...

...Ancient Israel was a holiness theme park...

...Hundreds of diffuse potential majors have been whittled down to just two profound, broad ones— Business Management and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics...

...I I f the aforequoted king’s students sound frighteningly sharp and articulate for young adults in their late teens and early twenties, trust (but verify) that their words have not been doctored...

...But you also see it is possible...

...There are loosely organized, fervently heartfelt student prayer sessions, and, in the typically unkempt bathroom of a student apartment I visited, a piece of paper taped to the wall noted Philippians 4:8: Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things...

...By Shawn Macomber King’s of New York King’s of New York - - — — - - - — - — During my visit Oakes conceded, “I love it when I’m mocked because it means they have no other rational response to my argument...

...I’ve never found a group of people so intelligent, who are Christian and have goals or big plans for their lives, but who were also so normal,” he told the college’s newspaper...

...We’re pushed, relentlessly, and most of us rise to the occasion,” Jonathon Seidl, a junior who recently had an op-ed accepted by the Wall Street Journal, said...

...When I first came to King’s I wanted to change the world—who doesn’t...

...I wanted to be humbled and sharpened and pruned and readied to make a real difference, not just have elliptical discussions with people who already agree with me...

...There’s nothing in the Bible that says we need to have a low capital gains tax rate,” he argued...

...What makes King’s unique is the disposition of its student body,” David Corbin, a newly minted politics professor at the school, explained...

...The point isn’t necessarily to fit every class into the box of an Evangelical Sunday service, Schundler said, but to begin with biblical conviction and graft it on to the real world...

...But when I look at the amazing people who believe in this school and got it off the ground, that’s incredibly encouraging to me and something I’m proud to be a part of...

...But if you feel a moral responsibility to help the poor, eventually you are going to have to grapple with the various theories to determine what will achieve that end...

...If that’s the level of earnestness taken into the toilet, it is not difficult to see why such a strong bond of trust has developed between students and administrators...

...Professors are on contract, not tenured...

...be clear, “engagement” is not code for T T o adopting a milquetoast Christianity to assim ilate with the dominant culture...

...What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace...

...R R ealizing this dream should be a bit easier from the Big Apple than from the idyllic but isolated environs the school occupied in Briarcliff Manor, New York, from 1938 until 1994...

...You see firsthand at King’s how much work bringing something new and special into existence takes...

...How...

...We’re not here to impose our worldview on others...

...The example of perseverance and strategy necessary to beat a path according to one’s own principles is not lost on students...

...S S chundler is the much celebrated former Jersey City Republican mayor whose politi cal career was sparked by indignation at inner-city living conditions he experienced while volunteering in food pantries and running adult Bible studies...

...We came here knowing you can’t get by at King’s with a basketful of easy electives...

...As Anthony Randazzo put it, “No potential employer is going to ask, ‘What’s Duke University?’ I’ve gotten used to describing myself and King’s in the same breath...

...Having been through the program, I’d make the same decision in a heartbeat...

...shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator...

...They won’t be able to just fly in on a paper airplane...

...What school doesn’t present itself as a paragon of inclusivity and unhindered truth seeking...

...Type-A personalities with teachable spirits,” is how Bryan Nance describes the student body...

...Adopting what President Mills calls an “ethos of efficiency,” the school is hurtling toward full selfsufficiency even as other schools beg and creak under bloated budgets...

...T T he king’s college does have at least one drawback: The school is still building its reputation, and the small class sizes mean fewer direct alumni networking opportunities, in the short run at least...

...How many other Christian schools are likely to bring in serious proponents of gay marriage, Marxist economists, and atheist superstar Christopher Hitchens to challenge their beliefs...

...King’s College boasts one of the thinnest residential life books in the history of higher education: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal...

...No, pride and seriousness of belief are on unabashed display...

...it to be good soil,” Olasky said, adding he also draws inspiration from the lyrics to “Mad Mission,” a song by Patti Griffin: It’s a mad mission/under difficult conditions/Not everyone makes it to the loving cup/But I’ve got the ambition so sign me up...

...is entirely absent, replaced by a confidence and openness that is rare if not unique...

...What is shocking is how seriously King’s pursues the practice...

...It doesn’t hurt, as one student eagerly attested, that New York City is the kind of place where you could snap a picture of Jessica Simpson on your cell phone camera sePTeMbeR 2008 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR 25 KInG’s of new yoRK en route to hear Justice Breyer speak on constitutional law...

...The secular world shouldn’t be allowed to think we’re hiding or intimidated,” Oakes said...

...It’s wrong that many theologians have given up on millions of King’s president Andy Mills 24 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR sePTeMbeR 2008 sHawn MacoMbeR people in urban areas,” professor Bret Schundler insisted...

...If you want to affect the culture you have to be where the culture is,” King’s president Andy Mills, the brilliant former CEO of Thomson Financial who many around the school refer to reverentially as “The Operator,” said plainly...

...A joyfulness permeates King’s which clearly derives from breaking out of the so-called Holy Huddle...

...New York City serves as the school’s campus...

...Otherwise, do what you know is right...

...The student living quarters in high-rises—“Houses” with names like Bonhoeffer, Churchill, Reagan and Susan B. Anthony, “like Hogwarts from Harry Potter” one young woman explained—are student-run...

...So the school that explicates the virtues of independent thinking and free market capitalism for its students strives also to embody those ideas by living outside the socialistic government and grant economies in which most state institutions currently exist...

...This isn’t the typical stereotype of a Christian college where guys and girls can’t hold hands after seven or aren’t allowed to watch certain movies or listen to certain songs,” recent graduate Anthony Randazzo said...

...New York City is full of institutions that affect the world and we would like to affect those institutions...

...Harvard University was launched in 1636, in the words of a 1643 brochure, “To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity...

...I can tell you from my experience King’s College boasts one of the thinnest residential life books in the history of higher education: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal...

...Enrollment has since jumped to nearly 300, with neo-pioneers from across the nation and 11 countries answering Oakes’s reverberating call without any sign of cessation...