Julia Jensen: Welcome back to Demise Of The Crown, the true story of a college in crisis. It’s a story about politics and faith. How the two have collided in America, and an example of the turmoil that ensues.

Colby McCaskill: As we went back to the spring semester in the last episode, we touched on the different reactions to that uncertainty. In Episode 2, we took an inside look at the inner workings of the Primacorp/King’s merger. And inherent in both of those stories was a need to raise a lot of money. On our ride this week on the truth-bound journalism train, we want to bring you back to the very beginning of King’s. How did it get to New York City? And why was it even in need of Primacorp’s help in the first place? Those are good questions. And hopefully we can provide some satisfactory answers.

Julia Jensen: This week’s show is going to be a doozy of history, politics, and faith. As such, it comes in five parts. First we hear about the college’s founding. After that, it’s time to go to Briarcliff Manor in upstate New York…but then closure? Act III deals with the college restart after it closed in ‘94. Later, we hear about King’s all the way until Primacorp. And our final act goes into detail about our opinions about the state of our faith, or perhaps the faith of the state.

Colby McCaskill: As always, and even in this, our longest episode in this series, we need to remind you of how we cannot possibly tell you every little detail about the story. Even so, we have tried our hardest to bring you a narrative that is both based in truth, and crafted with brevity. If you are interested, the sources we used are located both in the show description, and also linked in the transcript. We’ve done our best to bring you the most fair and accurate story possible. But, if you would like to request a correction, you can contact us at demiseofthecrownpodcast@gmail.com

Julia Jensen: One more note before we start this week’s show. The EST’s recent article on the this past semester’s financial crisis has continually been a valuable source for this project. We just wanted to take a second to say that much of this story is possible to tell because of the efforts of the three reporters on that story: Mandie-Beth Chau, Mindy Huspen, and Joshua Story. Special thanks to them and their work this past semester. 

Colby McCaskill: Last episode you heard a passing mention of New York Times. That publication actually wrote a piece about the financial crisis at King’s in the middle of March. If nothing else, it was a valuable lesson for the students about how this city can often perceive us. How this city can often perceive this school. What I’m talking about is the characterization of the college. It’s the part of the article that caused a lot of conversation in the student body at the time. 

Julia Jensen: The article introduced the school within the first few paragraphs by highlighting the demographic of students that attend King’s. The writer for the Times explains that quote, “Most of its students are white, and many come from conservative households far from New York City. For them, King’s has been a pathway to a world beyond their lives back home, where roughly half were either home-schooled or attended private, often Christian, academies.”

Colby McCaskill: As EST Campus Editor Mandie Beth Chau pointed out in her response piece, “Higher education across New York City is predominantly white – not just at King’s. Fordham is roughly 54% white, St. Joseph’s is 76% white, Columbia undergraduate schools are 42% white and Brooklyn College – a City University of New York school – is 34% white. Comparatively, King’s is 65% white.”

Julia Jensen: So yes. Technically speaking, the majority of its students are white. But, again, as Mandie and others argued, the picture that the article painted was of a white school. One that was funded by conservatives and established conservative presidents, but who also claim to be non-partisan.

Colby McCaskill: This story ruffled feathers. But if I’m honest, upon reflecting at the vibes this piece gives, it actually paints a pretty accurate portrayal of the conflicting ideas within The King’s College.

Julia Jensen: Wait. Hold on, what? Explain please!

Colby McCaskill: Well, I mean, we’ll get into it, but the college’s identity is complicated. King’s has been around since the late 1930s, has had many a president, and with each came a specific relationship with politics and the Christian faith. I think what I mean by “this gives accurate vibes” is that the identity of the college, as laid out by NYT, is one that has both the trappings of a white, conservative, evangelical-Christian, college, but also goes hard against those titles. It’s a complicated school, I think. And one that cannot be summed up in a short news article. 

Julia Jensen: Probably not even entirely by a long article, or this project even. 

Colby McCaskill: Exactly. There is so much more to the story. King’s has had a history of conservative alignment, but as one of EST’s own editors pointed out in the NYT piece, the college he experienced is not explicitly grounded in a political affiliation. The NYT piece and the subsequent backlash from the student body shows how integral the King’s identity is. And everyone has their own idea of what it is.

Julia Jensen: Okay… I hear you. I don’t yet know if I agree. I guess we’ll get to it. 

Colby McCaskill: Get to it we will. This is the episode where we dive into the history of King’s and track the through lines of politics and religion. It’s a little longer than the other ones, and that’s simply because it’s a hard topic to cover. 

Julia Jensen: Talk about faith and political affiliation concisely without taking heat? I doubt that’s possible. 

Colby McCaskill: But for real. We want to give this story the nuance it needed to be told accurately. So we're going to start from the beginning, tell you the whole story of The King’s College up until where we picked up from in episode two, and hopefully show you how the current situation at King's is anything but unexpected.

Julia Jensen: And with that, stand clear of the closing doors please, Here is episode five: Politics.

Colby McCaskill: From The Empire State Tribune, I’m Colby McCaskill. 

Julia Jensen: I’m Julia Jensen. And this is Demise Of The Crown. 

Colby McCaskill: If you want to fully understand the reasoning behind the situation that Juila and I came into in 2022, we have to start at the very beginning.

Julia Jensen: Throughout much of the 16th, 17th, and 18th century, American Protestant Christianity was mainly divided between denominations. Denominations are a fancy word for churches that are united upon specific interpretations of the Bible. They each have specific rules about church leadership, doctrine, and rituals. You’ve probably heard of these denominations. Baptist. Presbyterian. Methodist. There are even Non-Denominational churches, meaning the ideas about faith and life are determined by the individual church, and have no extra-church authority or system of accountability. But in the late 1800s, two ideas emerged that sowed the seeds for division and an upcoming church schism. The first was Darwinism, the idea that macroevolution was the driving force behind humanity. The other? Higher Criticism. The idea that the bible may not be correct in all cases. These burgeoning theories in Protestant Christianity were very controversial. One of the ways that those who disagreed with these ideas argued against them was through a series of essays, published in pamphlets, and titled: The Fundamentals. This is the foundation of American Fundamentalism. It’s the idea that the bible is literal, and the things that it says happened, actually did. 

Colby McCaskill: Of course, there is much more to unpack here. But these are the main issues that prompted this church schism.

Juila Jensen: This was a major split. American Protestantism was fracturing into the “Fundamentalist” and “Mainline” sects of Christianity.

Julia Jensen: The year is 1932, nearly a century before this project will be published. A young, Canadian-born Christian radio preacher is about 13 years into his faith. His name is Percy. And he is trying to start a Christian College.

Percy Crawford: Ah say will you just wait there a moment please, I want to talk to you. You there, by your television set. I want to read to you a passage of scripture from the Bible. 

Colby McCaskill: Percy Crawford came to believe in God after largely resenting Christianity. Here’s how his eventual friend, the famed Billy Graham, put it.

Billy Graham: And one day, he was in Los Angeles, and he went to church, because he was staying at the Bible school he couldn't find anywhere else to stay. So he went to the Church of the Open Door service and William Nicholson was preaching. 

…

This is the day the Lord has made one a day. That was when Percy Crawford walked down an aisle and said yes to Jesus Christ. Willie Nicholson or anyone else in that audience could have never dreamed all that was going to come from this young lad. We never know the value of one soul. It's worth any amount of money to win one man to Jesus Christ, because you never know but what a nation may be changed through that man.

Colby McCaskill: I think Billy is right in a sense. Percy came to Christ, and then decided to pursue a degree from an institution that fit his values. He would go on to establish his own college based off that model. A college that I and many others have attended. One that has significantly impacted us, nearly a century later.

Julia Jensen: Percy’s son, Dan Crawford, wrote a biography about Percy’s life in 2010, called: A Thirst For Souls. In it, he tells the story about Percy’s desire for an institution that combined higher learning and biblical values. Percy first made the appeal through a letter to the regular listeners of his radio evangelism show. He had, quote, “been sensing the need and praying about starting a Fundamental Christian College here in the East.” Endquote. Don’t worry, we’ll get into the meaning behind that word “Fundamental” soon enough. Dan later recalled in an oral history that:

Dan:I think he started a college in 1938. That's called the King's College.

…

 He went to Wheaton and his dream was to have a Wheaton of the East. Because Wheaton was really a good school.

Julia Jensen: But, and this is key:

Dan: It was never well funded. 

Julia Jensen: According to Dan, during Percy’s time at King’s, the radio preacher was often absent. Sometimes, Percy would only show up one day a week. The reason was not laziness, but his other ministries. Percy was constantly traveling and doing his radio program. A lot of the time those other ministries were keeping his new college afloat. But, because of his powerful authority within the up and coming school, and his constant distance from it, the early years were fraught with instability.

Colby McCaskill: The chapter in Percy’s biography devoted to his time building The King’s College is essentially the story of academic migration. Campus site to campus site all along the East Coast.

Dan: He got two beautiful properties in Delaware. And then he moved from Delaware to—knowing he started out in New Jersey, actually for three years, but then he couldn't get accreditation and couldn't get a degree in New Jersey. So he moved to Delaware for also the 40s. And then in the mid 50s, he moved to Briarcliff Manor, New York, Westchester County. And that's where I went to school. He was president of a college, he was president. But even when I only went there once a week, I mean, he was president. He was a sort of absentee president. 

…

So he's president of Briarcliff for five years, beautiful property. But it was an old, again, an old hotel that was gradually falling apart, and they just couldn't maintain it properly.

Colby McCaskill: The biography goes into more detail, recounting how the first site in Belmar, New Jersey, became untenable. The reason was because of the, quote, “impending inability to meet New Jersey’s requirement of half a million dollar endowment for four-year institutions.”. Dan quotes one professor who was active in the accreditation process, Robert Davies. Robert says that “Accreditation is essentially an economic problem. A college can upgrade its facilities, expand course offerings, and attract better faculty and students only so fast as available funds will allow. If King’s had received an infusion of $500,000 in funds in the early years, the college would have made the improvements needed for accreditation more quickly.”

Julia Jensen: Quote unquote “Shoestring” budgets. Incredibly devoted students. Low salaries. And most if not all of the authority of executive decisions in the hands of Percy. The first few years of the college, quote, “were hectic but happy ones.”

Colby McCaskill: Dan points out that his own father could be seen as responsible for the college’s nomadity. Other projects that competed for his attention. Percy was often too short sighted to keep dissident voices present. But probably the biggest one is its simple financial inviability. Really, every move of the campus can be viewed as an attempt to finally find a place that could sustain the college, give it the opportunity to get accredited, and all at the lowest cost. The place of equilibrium seemed to be found at an old hotel in a small hamlet in upstate New York: Briarcliff Manor.

Julia Jensen: Even within Fundamentalism, there was disagreement. Some Fundamentalists, like Bob Jones of the famed Bob Jones University, chose to adhere to a Fundamentalist idea of scripture. He refused to give in to the modern precepts of evolution, higher criticism, and racial integration. Others argued that you could both hold scripture to be literal, and true, and also participate and associate with those who differed from your point of view. One man, Harold Okenga, sought to name this new sect of the new sect of Fundamentalists. He settled on the term “Neo-Evangelical.”

Colby McCaskill: So what we have now, is a sect of American Protestant Christianity called the Mainline, which doesn’t believe that the Christian Bible is entirely Literal. The Fundamentalists argued that the Bible is literal. They even began to form communities where modernists were not welcome. The Neo-Evangelicals, sought a new path that would adhere to the infallibility of the bible. And they also chose to not resign from modern society.

Julia Jensen: Harold founded the National Associations of Evangelicals in 1942, just 6 years after the founding of The King’s College. 

Julia Jensen: Percy passed away from a heart attack five years after the move to Briarcliff. That speech you heard Billy Graham give a few moments ago was from his memorial service. 

Billy Graham: Be thou so ever nearer to them. bless these men that he has left behind to carry on this work in the various enterprises. Especially do we pray for King's College, the Bible undergird and lead and direct and pour out thy blessing. All of these things we pray in Christ's name. 

Julia Jensen: Percy’s time on earth had come to an end. But in that time he had played a major part in founding a college that would go on to impact many thousands of lives. At the time when Percy passed from this life, that little college was about to thrive. And it’s that era that we are heading to next.

Julia Jensen: The relevant parts of this story of the college’s history do not end with Percy. Far from it. The board eventually installed another radio minister to its seat of president, Robert Cook.

Colby McCaskill: Robert, or Bob, was an author, preacher, writer, and radio and television host. He broadcasted a daily talk radio program on biblical commentary. The sheer amount of audio from his archives, which you can find online, is staggering. A daily radio show for almost 30 years, 29 to be exact. It would be nearly impossible to find the most revealing parts of his time as a broadcaster. But one of the most prominent aspects is his opening greeting, and closing goodbye. 

Robert Cook: Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, that little greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend, Dr. Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. 

Colby McCaskill: At the end of his shows, he would consistently depart with these words:

Robert Cook: Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!

Colby McCaskill: Bob served as the president for the vast majority of the Briarcliff era, which, in turn, is where the mass majority of King’s alumni come from. 

Julia Jensen: His religious convictions were similar to that of Billy Graham and other quote unquote “Evangelical” leaders. 

Colby McCaskill: Bob served as the President of the National Association of Evangelicals for two years, from 1962-’64. 

Julia Jensen: 1964 is actually a very interesting year. Can we take a look at American Political history as a whole? 

Colby McCaskill: Good idea! In 1964, a peculiar thing happened. The southern United States, particularly the deeply southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, voted for the Republican Presidential candidate. This was incredibly out of the ordinary. The south had been pretty much Democrat since the end of the Civil War. 

Julia Jensen: So a region that had been pretty strong in its political identity suddenly votes for the other party’s candidate? What happened? Well, like all stories about history and politics in this country, there are conflicting narratives, but from our research, it comes down to the people running for President and the fight over Civil Rights. The Democratic candidate was the incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson, who had stepped into the role after JFK was assassinated in ‘63. The Republican candidate was Barry Goldwater, a state senator from Arizona. What was really interesting about this election cycle was that just a few months before the people went to the voting booths in November, some of the most impactful legislation of the 20th Century was passed. Lyndon Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in July of that year. Barry Goldwater, on the other hand, contested that piece of legislation all the way through the campaign. Specifically, Goldwater said that there were certain parts of it with which he took issue. Here he is reflecting on a talk show called Firing Line with William F. Buckley. This was 1966.

Barry Goldwater: If the same two items remain in the bill that cause me to think it unconstitutional that time, remained in any bill today, I would have to vote against it. 

…

I have no question that if I had voted for that bill, I would have softened some of the negro opposition to my candidacy, but I’m not foolish enough to think I would have won over the NAACP. I have to live with myself and I took an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. And this was the only civil rights bill in 12 years that I couldn’t vote for. 

Julia Jensen: That opposition that he mentions there is actually a big part of this moment in time. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, in the preceding months to the ‘64 election, made many calls for black Americans to vote. 

Martin Luther King Jr.: I come here to urge every person under the sound of my voice, to go to the polls on the third of November and vote your conviction. 

Julia Jensen: Though not for Barry Goldwater.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Now I know you’re intelligent people. I don’t need to tell you who to vote for. I don’t have any fear about that. You know who to vote for. I’m just asking you to vote. Now if you need a little information on my convictions at this point, I must admit to you that I am not going to vote for Barry Goldwater.

Colby McCaskill: The crazy thing here is, as you heard Goldwater himself say, he’s been supporting the civil rights legislation for a while. By many accounts, Goldwater was staunchly opposed to racial segregation. 

Julia Jensen: Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, had a history of voting against civil rights legislation.

Colby McCaskill: Former President Barack Obama, in his 2014 keynote address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Texas, praises Johnson’s ambition. But he also addresses his history.

Barack Obama: A young man in a hurry to plot his own escape from poverty and to chart his own political career. And in the Jim Crow South, that meant not challenging convention. During his first 20 years in Congress, he opposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote, once calling the push for federal legislation a farce and a sham.

Colby McCaskill: So we have a prominent Democratic leader who has a history of going along with an anti-civil-rights agenda. Running against him is a prominent Republican leader who has a history of fighting for civil rights and total racial integration. And the southern United States is feeling the pressure between these two ideas. Just months before the 1964 Presidential Election, the Republican nominee publicly opposes the act. And the Democrat signs it into law. The associated ideas switch between the politicians. Almost instantaneously. A near perfect storm of elections and movement. As the election results show, for those in the deep south, Goldwater seemed a much more appealing candidate. Perhaps it was the simple fact that the Republican hadn’t supported the bill. Or maybe it was because the bill still had the Democrat’s name in wet ink. Either way, the vast majority of the southern voters voted Republican. 

Julia Jensen: The college, at this point in its history, looked very different from the iteration Colby and I attended. It was suburban verging on rural. With multiple buildings, dormitories, and over 800 students by the 1980s. King’s, in this era, had a pledge of faith for all the students, faculty and staff to sign as a requirement for admission or employment. Its roots in what Percy Crawford called “Fundamentals” of the Christian faith continued. 

Colby McCaskill: The Republican Southern Strategy of the late 1960s all the way to the 1980s took these basic reactions to the Modernist/Fundamentalist schism and applied them to political issues such as race and economics. All of a sudden, those in the south who were Fundamentalist, who wished to conserve their way of thinking about the bible, who had not been in politics as a way of resigning from modern society, were courted by political candidates that pushed the Republican party as the vessel for Christian values.

Julia Jensen: In the 1970s, Jerry Falwell, a baptist minister from Virginia, went on a speaking tour. He  encouraged Fundamentalist Christians, like himself, to engage in politics. His political action group, the Moral Majority, rallied southern theologicially-conservative Christians to come together to help bring, quote “this country come back to basics, back to values, back to biblical morality, back to sensibility, and back to patriotism.” Such was the message of his 1980 book: Listen America!

Colby McCaskill: Out of the Moral Majority, the Christian Right emerged. But those who didn’t want to engage in the world, wanted to make sure the term Fundamentalist still meant resigning from modern society. So, the term “Fundamentalist” kind of fell by the wayside for those  who began to engage in politics. The term “Evangelical” started to become the term for anyone not “Mainline.”

Julia Jensen: So…why are we telling you all this?

Colby McCaskill: That’s a good question. All this to say, King’s was born during a schism in the American Protestant Church. And throughout its adolescence, has grown up alongside a growing population of leaders, speakers — Christians — who have pushed for the total unification of Christianity with Republican Politics. 

Julia Jensen: While Bob Cook was the President of King’s at Briarcliff Manor up in New York, Evangelicalism in the United States began to look very different. “Evangelical” now also described Christians who advocated for specific policies, mostly conservative ones, and who were adamant that those in Mainline Protestantism are not just misguided, but need to be distanced from. King’s is an institution that has, since its inception, declared itself to be a Christian college. Particularly a theologically-conservative Christian college. Finding itself here, in the midst of the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy,

Julia Jensen: King’s has tended in the direction of the mass majority of Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians: towards Republican Conservatism. 

Colby McCaskill: Eventually Bob passed on too. And the seat of the president was handed to Friedhelm Radandt, a Pomeranain immigrant and scholar, who would go on to say this about the college:

Friedhelm Radandt: I am the fellow on whose watch the King's College closed its doors…

…

King’s, on the strong recommendation of an intense study by the National accounting firm of Coopers and Lybrand, today's Price Waterhouse Coopers, had decided to sell its West Chester campus and move to a new campus. 

Colby McCaskill: What Friedhelm is describing here is a decision to move, once again. The plan was to venture from Briarcliff to a more suburban campus on the border between New York and Jersey. We’ll call the campus Sterling Forest, after the town, for clarity. 

Julia Jensen: The Evangelical Christian journalism magazine, ChristianityToday, did some wonderful reporting on the saga of King’s back in the 1990s. And you can read it all online in their archives. Or, more specifically, at these links here, here, here, and here.

Colby McCaskill: I gotta be honest, it's strange reading these articles, as a student who lived through much of the same situation. It’s like an alternate reality King’s, words on a page that give the same vibe as our situation, but with different details. As ChristianityToday reported in December of 1993, quote, “King’s is $21 million in debt; the sale would whittle its debt to $9 million…But, Radandt admits, another $1.9 million is needed.”

Julia Jensen: In order to pay off some of this debt, you just heard Friedhelm recount it, they were planning to sell the Briarcliff campus, and move to the less expensive Sterling Forest. Remember how Percy’s iteration of the college had a systematic deficit? It was never really well funded. And he had to work on the side to fund it. In this, the end of the Briarcliff Era, that deficit had reared its ugly head and forced a liquidation and consolidation of assets.

Friedhelm Radandt: When the transaction could not be completed due to opposition from the town of Briarcliff Manor, the New York Commissioner of Education, in October 1994, ordered the college close. 

Julia Jensen: Specifically, the new tenet would be a sports center, which worried residents about, quote, “noise and traffic,” unquote. There was resistance from the community. A push for an, quote “environmental-impact study.” and the college’s tricky financial situation stretched too thin. Torn between paying for two campuses for too long, King’s went bankrupt and closed in December of 1994.

=this is how King’s first died. It was caught between campuses, held to pay for both longer than it could sustain. And went bankrupt…Its founding vice—financial inviability—came back to bite the college hard…

Colby McCaskill: A problem that caused the college’s closure in 1994 is the same problem that caused the college’s closure in 2023. What does this say about the college and those running it? Well, we’re going to get into that in our last episode. For now though, as you probably guessed, the 1994 closure was not final.

Julia Jensen: That story Friedhelm Radandt has been telling, that audio you’ve been hearing, is not from some interview about the end of King’s. As I’m sure you know, the story of The King’s College did not end in 1994. Actually, that audio is from an address Friedhelm gave at a King’s event in 2016, called Founder’s day. Yes, King’s ceased academic operations. It died. But then someone brought it back to life. I'll let Friedhelm tell you the rest of the story.

Friedhelm Radandt: The New York Commissioner of Education, in October 1994, ordered the college close. Before that order actually arrived, I received a phone call from Dr. Nolan, at the time the commissioner for higher education in the state of New York. 

He added that in his opinion, the state of New York needed a college like King’s. And he was praying for our reopening with our charter and of course King’s remained a legal entity. 

…

As I walked into my office, the last day of that year, I found on my desk an envelope that contained a check. A gift of $100,000. What startled me most with the strange words in the attached note. This gift is not to be used to cover debts or ongoing expenses, rather to explore opening the college in New York City. I Did precisely as requested, and proceeded to bring together a group of like minded people

…

A couple of months went by. That's when Dan Kim, the commercial Realtor in charge of all rentals at the Empire State Building 

…

enthusiastically told us I have discovered in the Empire State Building Space designated for education. And I'm holding it for the King's College. 

…

You've all heard that ultimately, Campus Crusade for Christ made it possible for the King's College to resolve its financial dilemma and opened its doors to students and the Empire State Building. 

…

A phone call from somebody completely unknown to me, Stan Oakes, marked the beginning of the next chapter. Could he if he came to New York see me and talk about ways to help King’s. We hit it off and I showed him the space in the Empire State Building, introduced him to various players in the battle for King’s, told him about the difficulties that had led to the closing of the institution and filled him in on the foreclosure Kings was facing in the near future. When at our third or fourth meeting standard, I returned to our home in tuxedo. They're still being the pre cellphone era. There was a message on our home phone from Dr. Bill Bright, the founder and president of Campus Crusade. Stan, get yourself a beeper. I've been trying to reach you all day to tell you that this morning in a meeting, the Lord brought to my mind The King's College with such force that I feel he wants us to go with it. A few weeks later, on the day before the one on which the foreclosure sale was to take place, Campus Crusade wired the necessary $100,000 that would permit our legal term to file for reorganization under the bankruptcy laws, effectively keeping the foreclosure from taking — from going forward.

Julia Jensen: Campus Crusade for Christ brought King’s back to life. The treasurer for The King’s College at that time has called it a, quote, “wholly owned subsidiary.” It was Campus Crusade for Christ’s. It wasn’t its own thing until they separated in 2012. 

Colby McCaskill: That first decade or so in the basement of the Empire State Building was, as the earlier era of the college had been, hectic.

Julia Jensen: Peter Wood, a previous Provost for King’s puts it like this in his article for The American Conservative. Quote, “At that point the college had a campus of sorts, a handful of staff and faculty, a lot of unwarranted confidence, and very few realistic ideas about how to proceed. It tried a variety of contradictory approaches loosely centered on the idea that it was going to bring Christian higher education to the heart of Manhattan. But it had no coherent curriculum or any compelling reason for students to attend.” Unquote.

Colby McCaskill: Peter’s whole article is, if I had to only use one word to describe it, scathing. It tells the story of a college that tried to balance high academic standards with dreams of huge enrollment. For Peter, this right here is the reason for the college’s current financial crisis. He writes that, quote, “The college had become a place where students of any sort who wanted to hang out in New York City would find a convenient bivouac.” According to Peter, instead of a bastion of higher education, focused on teaching outstanding students from a Christian perspective, it was a school desperate for students. So much so that the academic curriculum soon devolved into mainstream collegiate gunk.

Julia Jensen: There are other opinions out there though, and many don’t condemn the college quite as profusely as Peter Wood. We’ll get to those in a minute, but first let me tell you who is running the operation. because that is a big part of this era of King’s. The main man behind the connection with Campus Crusade for Christ is Dr. Bill Bright. 

Bill Bright: Since 1944 I’ve had the privilege of bringing a lot of happiness into this world by sharing the Lord Jesus Christ with tens of thousands of students and laypeople around the world.

Colby McCaskill: Bill is actually the founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ. Campus Crusade for Christ, or “Cru” as they are now called, is a non-profit organization, a pretty big one too, that uses a lot of its money to invest in college discipleship ministry around the world. It’s kind of like if Church was all one big thing but not vested in a physical location. Kind of like the ghost kitchens of international Christian youth outreach. It’s a lot of different things. All under one company. And it’s probably closer to you than you realize.    

Julia Jensen: Here’s how Warren Cole Smith, Editor in Chief for the Christian non-profit watchdog news outlet, MinistryWatch, talked about Bill, and the resurgence of King’s in New York City.

Warren Cole Smith: I think in many ways if you look at Percy Crawford's evangelical zeal in the 40s 50s and 60s, and Bill Bright’s evangelical zeal in the 90s and early 2000s, before he passed away, I think they were blood brothers. I think they were really kindred spirits. 

Julia Jensen: Warren can speak with such confidence here because he worked as a consultant for King’s a few years after the resurgence.

Colby McCaskill: The other name that Radandt mentioned earlier was Stan Oakes. That is Stanley J. Oakes. He is the guy that worked in charge of the King’s operations under Cru. In the Primacorp story we heard about back in Episode 2, Primacorp set up TKCO to act as a business mediator between Primacorp and King’s. Stan was essentially incharge of that same system, just during the Cru era.

Julia Jensen: This is all great and everything. A resurrection of the college. Back from the dead. Actually, ChristianityToday, in their reporting on this specific event, ran the headline: “King's College Resurrection Signals Big Apple's Renewal.” So, in a way, for King’s to come back from the dead kind of spurred a certain paradigm shift that said: Yes, a Protestant deeply-Christian school can thrive in New York City.

Colby McCaskill: But the big question is: what were the through lines of religious convictions, political alignment, and financial security? Well, we’re going to tackle the politics and religion in act five. For right now, I’m sad to report that the systematic gap between the college’s revenue and the expenses of the institution was nowhere near solved. Again, it was just stuffed for the time being.

Sarah: When we were resurrected in the 2000s, it was Campus Crusade for Christ coming in giving us all the money we need to save us.

Julia Jensen: For its time with King’s, Cru, from all the reporting we’ve done, put forth a good faith effort to try to establish the college in the city. They patched the budget hole. They aided with recruitment. They even instituted a college visiting program called quote unquote “Operation airlift.” This all according to the minutes from a 2005 New York State Board of Regents Re-accreditation meeting.

Colby McCaskill: But before that, the same year King’s granted its first degree in New York City in 2003, the college decided to elect Stan Oakes to be the president.

Julia Jensen: At this time, under the administration of Stan, Peter began crafting his core curriculum, the PPE core, named after the focus on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.

Colby McCaskill: As Peter writes, quote, “It was a great first year. The faculty, old and new, came alive, and the students who grasped what was happening loved it. But at the end of that first year, we lost about 40 percent of the enrollment. It was what I expected and had foretold, but it panicked the board and Oakes, who imagined that the college would expunge itself if it faced another year of such attrition.” Unquote.

Julia Jensen: According to Peter, Stan couldn’t commit to a small school with an incredibly rigorous curriculum. And because of this, he made a lot of poor decisions. But Stan, unlike Peter, saw King’s with the lens of Cru. To him, King’s was a means to a greater end of spreading Christianity.

Colby McCaskill: As EST wrote in its Death Spiral article, quote, “‘We can now confidently predict that we will have 2,000 outstanding students within 10 years,’ Oakes said…Leadership was shamelessly optimistic about the future of King’s.”

Julia Jensen: A few years later, Peter stepped down from his position as provost. At that same time, Stan also received news of a tumor, and took a leave of absence. In 2009, the two major visionaries for the college were all of a sudden gone. Board Chairman Andy Mills filled in twice for Stan during his medical problems. But the college was still looking for a new visionary. Here’s how Warren recalls the events.

Warren Cole Smith: In 2010 or so, Dinesh D'Souza had a very different kind of public persona than he does today.

…

Dinesh wrote a book called: What's so Great About Christianity? That was, in my view, a very excellent book. And it put him on the radar screen of a lot of Christian conferences. Christian colleges were bringing him in in ways that they had not brought him in before he was—up until then, he was more of a conservative firebrand, I would say. When he wrote: What's so Great About Christianity? It was a kinder, gentler, Dinesh D'Souza in some ways. And he started speaking in a lot of Christian conferences. He had a very high profile celebrity status already. You've also got to understand where the King's College was at that point, as well. Stan Oakes had had a stroke, the president of the restart. And King’s was in a kind of a weird spot for a couple of years. I don't think anybody really wanted to fire Stan, but at some point it became pretty clear that he was not going to come back in the way that everybody wanted him to. 

…

And Andy Mills, who was the chairman of the board, took over as interim president. I'm just—this is my opinion here, but I'm happy for this to be on the record. I think Andy just got exhausted by the process, and the rest of the board members got exhausted. And they were swinging for the fences, they were looking to hit a home run. And they hired Dinesh, hoping that this newfound Christian faith that he was professing in his books, and at conferences, was legitimate. 

Colby McCaskill: If you don’t already know who this Dinesh guy is that we’re talking about. Don’t worry. I’ll introduce you. Say Hi Dinesh.

Dinesh D’Souza: Hello, I’m Dinesh D’Souza, and this is Season 1, Episode 1, of my new Podcast.

Colby McCaskill: Oh, sorry guys. Didn’t I tell you? This whole King’s podcast was too much work so I’m just going to hand it off to you Dinesh, and it’ll be his from now on. Alright Dinesh, it’s yours now, take it away.

Dinesh D’Souza: In this podcast we're going to be talking about me. Why? Because it’s my podcast. We’re going to be talking about Impeachment. The second Impeachment, round two. They’re trying it again, they didn’t get him the first time.

Colby McCaskill: Actually Dinesh, sorry, you’re actually behind on the times a little, so I’m going to take it from here. No, but that was Dinesh D’Souza. What you just heard was his introduction to his podcast that he started a few years ago. In the simplest and most polite explanation, Dinesh is a conservative political-commentator. He has a few books out, quite a few movies, and he used to appear on college campuses and many a Fox News segment. He’s done a lot, and there’s a lot to unpack there. But what we’re going to focus on first is his role as President of The King’s College.

Julia Jensen: Now this may surprise you, or it may not depending both on your political views, and your knowledge of Dinesh and his work. But Dinesh’s role as the President of King’s was controversial. Even within King’s.

Warren Cole Smith: I should also say, though, that Marvin Olasky, who was on the search committee, he was the Provost of the King's College at that time, vigorously objected to the hiring of Dinesh D'Souza. And he ultimately resigned from the school as a result of Dinesh being hired. That was a big blow, because by then Marvin had been the provost by then for, I'm thinking maybe, about five years. And he had hired probably most of the faculty at that point.

…

That was a big deal when Marvin resigned in protest over Dinesh. 

Julia Jensen: At this point too, the college wasn’t only shaking things up by hiring Dinesh, but only a year into his presidency, they had to move campuses again! Here’s how Sophia experienced it when she first came to King’s. 

Colby McCaskill: (whispered) Not college. 

Sophia: The fall of 2012 is when I entered, which was the first—I was there the first month we opened. I actually went a few weeks early because I happened to be in the city and they were moving in. I went to an Inviso, our visit weekend, in the Empire State Building. So I knew what it looked like, the February before. And they, I think they were not planning to move. I think it was kind of an all of a sudden thing. 

Julia Jensen: It was. Warren was there too.

Warren Cole Smith: And what I do know is that during the whole time that I was working, either in the Empire State Building or across the street, they were doing a billion dollar renovation of the Empire State Building, and I think everybody's rent went up pretty dramatically, whenever that renovation was completed. It was a beautiful renovation. It turned a, really a decaying and decrepit building, into really first rate Class-A office space in New York. That's really all I know, that I think our rent went way up, and we were just kind of priced out of that neighborhood. Yes. 

Julia Jensen: So, King’s decided to move downtown, to the financial district to be specific. Dean David Leedy, you heard from him in our first episode, wrote a little goodbye for the Empire State space. “It’s the end of the year—and the end of era,” he wrote. “Our little college, re-founded in the Empire State Building in 1999, vacates its iconic surroundings in a few short weeks. After all, much good has come to The King’s College in our 13 years of residing here. It’s been remarkable.”

Colby McCaskill: It really had. From millions of dollars in debt and closed, to having a prominent political commentator as its president while residing in a setting David called “the world’s most iconic building.” But, again, this move was one that was based on financials. Don’t forget, King’s was priced out of the neighborhood.

Julia Jensen: From the outside, it may have seemed like a decision to move to a place with more impact, downtown, in all the hubbub. But it was an economic decision, first and foremost. That’s not to say King’s didn’t upgrade when they moved into their new space. Much of the campus space in the Empire State Building had been basement levels. Subterranean one could say. But with the new place, with a fancy shmancy new Broadway address, all of the classroom spaces were above the ground. King’s was also able to lease space for a large student union, which you heard about in Episode 1. The campus size and population were both growing. It seemed like King’s had moved past the startup stage and was heading in a direction of stability. In fact, this was the exact impression Sophia recounts when she thinks back to this era.

Sophia: I just got the sense like that, though. The sense of: We're not established yet. And so it'll be a little rocky. But then I made friends with older students, and even former alumni right away that told us that we almost shut down a few years ago. While I was a student, I knew that. So I thought: We're not quite there yet. But it sounds like we're out of the thick of it. 

Julia Jensen: Look. We wish this is where the story worth telling ended. We wish King’s did go educate off into the sunset, overcame their budgetary problems, and lived happily ever after. But with all things in life, especially King’s, change just keeps coming. Here is Warren again. 

Warren Cole Smith: And then, okay. Fast forward really just a matter of months. Dinesh is speaking at an apologetics conference in South Carolina. In Greenville, South Carolina, or maybe Spartanburg…I think it was Greenville. And I'm also a speaker at that conference. I'm a full time reporter for WORLD. But I know Dinesh, and I've met his wife Dixie. And I'm there in the green room with Dinesh and other speakers, and Dinesh is introducing this woman as his fiancee. And I'm like: Wait a minute. I know his wife. 

I know this is not his fiancee. I don't think anybody else in the room really did, because then Dinesh, like I said, was kind of a celebrity. There was nobody who really knew Dinesh in that environment. He would parachute in and he would parachute out after. You get airlifted out after these events. So, I mean, he had pretty successfully avoided the kind of transparency and accountability into his own personal life. But because I knew Dinesh and I'd met his wife and daughter, I was like: Wait, this is not right. So I called Dinesh the next—I will also say that there was a professor that there—this was an apologetics conference, was hosted by North Greenville University, which is a Christian college in South Carolina. And Tony Beam, who was the one of the vice presidents, actually, was given the task of taking Dinesh to the airport, after he spoke, I think it was on Friday night. And so took him back to the airport Saturday morning. He took not only Dinesh but his girlfriend, they picked up at like five in the morning. They had clearly spent the night together. And Tony Beam came to me to ask my advice about what they should do about that, because that was clearly a violation of the standards of the school that was sponsoring the event. So I called Dinesh on, I think, Monday, and just asked directly about it. I'm trying to remember now. He didn't return my phone call until Tuesday. In the interim, he filed for divorce from his wife, Dixie. And then that became a part of the story, the fact that he was filing for divorce. He said that his marriage had been rocky for a long time, that he and his wife were already separated, and we're all but divorced. That relationship with this new girl, he said: I didn't think that Evangelicals would find that inappropriate in any way. Which, I think, spoke a bit to just how new Dinesh was to the faith, and how new he was to the Evangelical subculture. So I wrote about all this and maybe a couple of stories. I think when I wrote my first story, very quickly after that Dinesh either resigned or was asked to resign. 

Colby McCaskill: That’s right. Warren, the guy you just heard, was the reporter that broke the story. Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative political commentator and pundit, allegedly had an affair with a woman, not his wife, that he brought to a Christian conference. This caused a lot, and I mean a lot, of controversy. For The King’s College, marital infidelity was not something they wanted to tolerate. Warren wrote about the event in an article for WORLD on October 16 —. Like a month into the new school year, in a new location! Within two days of that article’s publication, the college’s Board of Trustees was accepting D’souza’s resignation.

Warren Cole Smith: So I mean, the nutshell of that story is that Dinesh was hired to be a rainmaker. He was hired to have a big impact. He was a well known celebrity in the conservative world. I think there was some sense that maybe Dinesh could turn The King's College into growth, into Hillsdale.

…

And it was just a bad fit, it was a bad fit all the way around. I think Marvin Olasky was visionary in recognizing that. Dinesh retaliated against my reporting by saying that Marvin, who had objected to Dinesh becoming president, had basically sicked me on him as his lap dog, or as his Bulldog, which couldn't be farther from the truth. I was counseling Marvin privately: Don't resign, that Dinesh is influenceable, that yes, he doesn't have a well formed Christian worldview. But he does seem to be authentic in his profession of his faith, and let's work with him.

…

I don't think there's any doubt, Marvin was right. The board was wrong. You know, that it was a bad hire. It never should have happened. Just to say it plainly: Evangelical institutions are blinded by celebrity. And I think that for everything that I love about The King's College, I think that they were momentarily blinded by both Dinesh D'Souza’s celebrity, and their own fatigue about having not had a president—really a full time President in, at that point, probably years. From the time Stan originally had his stroke originally to the point where they actually hired Dinesh, I wouldn't be surprised that two or three years had gone by. That was at a time when the college needed somebody's full time and attention. Somebody needed their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the windshield. And that was just not happening. 

Julia Jensen: We’re not bringing this up to point out: Hey! What a bad college this is! They chose this guy to be their president? No, we're talking about this because Dinesh’s departure is a notable point in the story of King’s political identity. 

Colby McCaskill: After Dinesh left King’s, Andy Mills served once again as Interim President of the college. For the third time. Legendary. 

Julia Jensen: About a year later, Dr. Gregory Thornbury was inaugurated as President of King’s, in the middle of 2014. He and his then-wife Kimberly were instrumental in the story of King’s. Here’s how Kimberly, in an interview with EST, described how difficult the political landscape was to navigate during her time at King’s.

Kimberly Thornbury: But I do think that the tension of you know, where is King’s going? Is it going to be Hillsdale? Are we going to be sharing a table with Charlie Kirk at CPAC? Are we going to be, you know, being in the certain rooms with him, so there's this, the donors, and then where the faculty are, which are like a big tent, and then like, the incoming students, and it's like, for me, in charge of marketing. I'm like, what?

Colby McCaskill: Aside from the tension over politics, there were the obligatory budgeting problems.

Kimberly Thornbury: Greg would raise $250,000 from a new donor. And the CFO would be like: That's great, we need five times that much by next month.

Colby McCaskill: We haven’t really put a number to this systematic deficit yet. Kimberly calls it a 

Kimberly Thornbury:…broken business model.

Colby McCaskill: And that was intentional. For most of my time here, the only information that we got as students, (and none of it straight from administration), was that the college had a thorn in its side of a chronic budget deficiency. I didn’t know exactly how much until beginning to press further for answers for this project. But this broken business model is a HUGE deal! This is one of the MAJOR reasons for the demise of King’s. I’ll let Kimberly tell you more.

Kimberly Thornbury: And so the broken endowment is the fact that there is no endowment and unlike any other college we didn't get Residents life revenue, and we had to pay not just rent. It's not like we're in Mississippi. New York City rent, and no donors want to give towards capacity building things. They want to give towards buildings or new initiatives. It is the hardest amount of money to raise for light bulbs and rent. It's not sexy, because you give 5 million, and it goes down the drain. And you need that—donors just don't operate like that. 

…

I will say that Greg did it, because no one loved those faculty and students more than him. Like, how far will you go in your personal life? Because if you do not go to this meeting, the people that you love and work shoulder to shoulder with will not get payroll. So you wonder, people with their ideas like, Oh, how could you do this, this and this? Well, you know, what? There was, in our human mind, no other way. Because these children of the faculty needed a paycheck. 

Julia Jensen: Here’s how Kimberly first understood the extent of this chronic deficit.

Kimberly Thornbury: So I got a title in January, but in October, they finally trusted me enough to open the books. 

…

And there was this whole other side project called like the Kings online, which I think they've tried a million times. And it was October. And our budget ran like, I don't know, like my most higher ed, the fiscal year is July towards whatever. And I'm like, huh, our budget is like 20 million, and we're getting this much in revenue. And this, you know, Greg has, and I'm like, What is this like? Five plus million dollars? Oh, that's the money that we're gonna get this year from Kings online. Does the faculty know about it? No. Who's involved with it? One staff member? Is there anything on the website? No. What are you going to offer? PPE? Has there been a market study? No. What's the price point? We're not sure. Oh, what have you done? Oh, we've engaged this group in Florida to sort of help us and they've guaranteed that they would raise 5 million? Have they done it before? No. And I remember coming into Greg's office and I said, we're in trouble. Because we should have asked this before we even took the job. Because they are banking on a meeting budget by something that the faculty don't even know about? And how in the world would you even start marketing program or whatever, before the end of the fiscal year? And who is going to take an online PPE? Most people don't even know about it with an average 27-29 ACT score? Completely rigorous? Like at 13,000 a year. Okay, so 15,000 times? How much are people willing to pay for that divided into 5 million? And that's how many people need to pay and continue through the program. So I remember that clearly. 

…

And I remember that day, it was like I turned white. 

Julia Jensen: Let it be said, though, as Kimberly already has, that the Thornbury Administration loved this school.

Kimberly Thornbury: Greg called them Aston-Martin faculty. And every day, Greg and I would leave the house. And I would look at Greg and I would say, Do you love them? And he would say I love them. 

Julia Jensen: During this Thornbury era of King’s, from the ‘13-’14 school year to the ‘16-’17 school year, The college hit 500 student enrollment numbers consistently, and never once dropped below 400 students. If you go to 

The King’s College’s Youtube page, and scroll back, there is a treasure trove of speakers, lectures, and debates during this era. It was during this time that King’s launched The Center for the Study of Human Flourishing, an academic center that brought in a multitude of speakers to teach on issues of criminal justice reform, as well as political, social and economic morality. King’s reinstated its annual tradition of a whole school fall retreat, an event that had not been held since 2011. The college flourished.

Colby McCaskill: But, alas, change was not satisfied and showed up once again, knocking on the door. Greg tells the story the best. Just so you know, these clips are taken from an interview done by Warren Throckmorton, on his blog, in 2020. You can find the full interview linked in our transcript, or down below in our shownotes. Here is Greg.

Gregory Thornbury: Well, you know, I, I had always been a fan of—reader of—classical liberalism, which I, at the time, had felt was the best of the, you know, the tradition of Western culture. And although I myself was always a registered Independent, I was a Democrat when I was in, in college, you know, 

…

many of the intellectuals that I respected as independent thinkers, people like Roger Scruton, were, you know, upholding, you know, some of the best of that classical liberal tradition. And when the, you know, 2016, election season, sort of came into play, you know, you have the, the usual suspects pop up, as, you know, potential candidates for President of the United States. And for better, and actually, for worse, you know, I was surrounded by a lot of these people in my capacity as the president of the King's College in New York City.

…

And so I knew a lot of these people and, and then, you know, Trump floated in, like a toxic nuclear cloud, hovering over Guam first, and then, you know, made its way to the mainland. And it was, it was like this, you know, to use your words this mimetic contagion began to take over, everybody that I once thought had any, any brains, at least in terms of the people that were, you know, you know, the backers, and the funders and the support of evangelical institutions. I remember going to so because I was President of King’s, I will get invited to like these, you know, meetings. And, you know, I was, you know, I would, I would show up and like, look to my right, and there would be Steve Bannon standing next to me, you know, like terrifying stuff like that. And I saw the sort of behind the scenes, how all these you know, people that were backing, you know, whether it was Paul Singer backing Rubio, or it was, you know, Rebecca Mercer backing Ted Cruz or all these other people, how slowly they all began swinging in the direction of Trump. And I was invited to a meeting at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square, where it was going to be Trump talks to Evangelicals. Now, it's so it seems like a billion years ago at this point, but remember that at the time, sort of the general sentiment was, you know, evangelicals don't take this guy seriously. I mean, he doesn't know he doesn't know anything about Christianity or the Bible. 

…

I mean, the, the people that were in the room were definitely from that kind of charismatic — all these little independent nonprofit — political action type things like super right wing, and I saw a friend of mine, Father Marcel, who's a Catholic priest, and he's a philosopher. And so we stood together in line. And we were just kind of like, incredulous, and, you know, but then I, when it happened, you know, when the meeting actually occurred, I realized that this was like a coordinated, it was like, pro wrestling. This was a fav. I mean, this was all the outcome was decided that, you know, this was an issue. This wasn’t Trump trying to make his case to evangelicals. This was Franklin Graham comes out and gives his blessing. And George Barna comes out and says how bad the culture is, and secularism is going to crush you into smithereens. And then, you know, Jerry Falwell, Jr, comes out and says, This is the, you know, this guy would have been the Anointed One of my father's legacy, and Mike Huckabee comes out with the: Aww shocks  you'd beat me in the primaries. But I walked out of there, and I was like, oh, no, like, that. The, this is a massive steam train going. And then one by one. I saw all of the money go in the direction of Trump. I mean, it was like, everybody pulled back from anybody else. And, you know, I was like, This is really bad. I mean, so I was, I was always Never Trump, but I was in bad shape. Because I was at an institution where literally, every single one of my trustees and major donors were getting on board of the Trump train. 

…

I remember, there's certain moments I remember so vividly. I, I saw Russell Moore, you know, who had been such a bellwether, you know, against Trump in the run up to the campaign. I saw him on, like, maybe two days before the election. In Columbus Circle. He was going to be on Anderson Cooper, CNN. And we sat down, had a coffee, and he was just absolutely cocksure. There is no way that Trump could win, you know, no way. And he did not want Trump to win, obviously, but I don't know that you could say that obviously, because, you know, but he really thought that well, you know, the aftermath will be that we can at least have a voice in the Clinton administration. During that conversation though. He got a phone call from Mike Pence. So, it's not like he was totally separated from it, but he was sure that they would lose. 

…

There was just a real concerted effort during the campaign to recruit the swing Evangelicals.

…

But there was a full court press done there to to try to, and, you know, and then, by the end, you know, we know, the 81% voted for him. So at that point, I was like, I'm, I'm toast, because I was in a position of having to raise $10 million in cash every year, just to keep the lights on it kings, you know, it just, you know, it was a small college in New York City. And, you know, there's it just wasn't scalable fast enough. So it was just all fundraising and like, boom, boom, boom, every single one of my major donors were just like, not only apathetic or you know, like, you know, kind of, like, indifferent about Trump, or better, better, you know, him than Clinton, it was like, they got excited.

…

And so by the summer of 17, I was like: I'm out. I'm gonna have to get out and find another job, which was, you know, I had a nervous breakdown. Because my whole life I've been sort of on this pathway to be kind of like an Evangelical leader and then just boom. It was all dust in a matter of months.

Warren Throckmorton: Yeah. All over all over support for the president. all over support for one guy.

…

Gregory Thornbury: So, you know, I mean, that's why I quit.

Colby McCaskill: To summarize, Greg was confronted with a political decision. Was it the right move to associate with the Trump presidential run, and eventually the Trump administration? Or not? And he was the one burdened with patching, as you just heard, this systematic deficit of around 10 million dollars each year. This was a problem that has been a part of the King’s story from the very beginning. But he chose to not endorse Trump. He actually decided that he would…

Gregory Thornbury:…Never Trump.

Colby McCaskill: This choice, to not endorse Trump, or even just put up with the leading Republican candidate, made that deficit all the more apparent. 

Julia Jensen: Greg was the connecting point between King’s and these other Republican deep pocketed donors. So when he left, a lot of the money stopped flowing. 

Colby McCaskill: So let me lay it all out in front of you. Percy Crawford, started a self-proclaimed Christian college that was based on the quote “fundamentals.” It was never well-funded. Percy spent the entirety of his tenure as president splitting his time between running the college and his other ministries that helped fund the college. After his death, Bob Cook, another Christian radio minister, took over the position of president. He served faithfully for over two decades. But could not fix the college’s systematic budget gap. So much so that 10 years after he stepped down from the role of president, the college was closed. Stuck paying for two campuses in the midst of another economically-propelled move, King’s went bankrupt in 1994. When the then-president, Friedhelm Radandt, reopened the college, there were two main reasons they were even able to educate people at all. The first was that the charter was not revoked because a Regent’s Board member wanted a good Christian college in New York. The second was that King’s was not its own. It was bought by Campus Crusade for Christ, its financial supporter until 2012. Throughout the time in the Empire State building, it felt as though the financial problems could maybe disappear. But after King’s separated from Cru, the burden of financial stability fell squarely upon the Thornbury administration. During this time the college thrived. But the administration was constantly aware of its infeasible funding system. “The college was apocalyptically expensive to run, '' Greg told me recently. King’s knew that it was not able to function without the backing of its Board of Trustees. But it was made up of conservative donors with deep pockets that would, year in and year out, cover the deficit to keep King’s alive. Then the Thornbury administration did not endorse Donald Trump. In fact, Greg decided that he would not work with them. He wouldn’t work with Trump supporters. As Greg left King’s, the deficit, implicit from the beginning, was obvious like never before. The college lost millions of dollars each year as a result. This was the situation in which we found Tim Gibson in Episode two, on the verge of collapse because the Greg Thornbury funding machine had departed.

Julia Jensen: Okay. I think you’re all caught up on this history. This is a college that has never been stable on its own finances or endowments. And apart from just a simple lack of action to fix that, there are other confounding factors that exacerbate the problem. And so now, we have arrived at our final stop on our ride this week.

Colby McCaskill: Okay. Let’s slow down for a second. Both Julia and I have been trying to understand the nuances of King’s political identity for a while now. And suffice to say it’s both complicated, and a point of tension.

Julia Jensen: Throughout its history, King’s has associated itself with Evangelical Christianity. Maybe at the very beginning you could argue that it was Fundamentalist with Evangelical flavor. But these are Christian creeds, not political creeds. During its stint in New York City, the association with Republican politics has stayed. The Dinesh D’Souza scandal was perhaps a wakeup call to the administration on the direction they were headed. Andy Mills, Interim President of the college after Dinesh’s departure, said this in an address to the student body. Quote, "The King's College is a Christian college. Period. We want to find someone who shares our vision."

Colby McCaskill: Also, Christianity Today ran the headline: “After D'Souza's Departure, The King's College Seeks Doctrine Over Politics.” We’re not trying to argue that Christians associating themselves with Republican politics is somehow unbiblical. Instead we’re trying to show how fully conflating the Christianity of Christ with any political party, is bound for trouble.

Julia Jensen: This is what the late Tim Keller argued in the many works that he published. The line our EST editor gave to the New York Times reporter echoes this too. In an Op-Ed for the New York Times, written by Tim Keller, in September 2018, he makes this point clear. The title? “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t.”

Colby McCaskill: Here’s what he writes. quote, “most political positions are not matters of biblical command but of practical wisdom. This does not mean that the church can never speak on social, economic and political realities, because the Bible often does…However, there are many possible ways to help the poor. Should we shrink government and let private capital markets allocate resources, or should we expand the government and give the state more of the power to redistribute wealth? Or is the right path one of the many possibilities in between? The Bible does not give exact answers to these questions for every time, place and culture.”

Julia Jensen: You see, Tim’s argument, like many, like ours, states that the Bible consistently advocates for particular attitudes, not particular policy. 

Colby McCaskill: For American politics, attitudes of candidates are important to notice, but often policy takes the front seat. Like-minded Christians, who hold the same ideal, and desire the same eventual outcome, can of course vote for two different candidates because they believe different solutions to the same problem. 

Julia Jensen: Of course, as a school who prided itself on its rigorous and highly populated Politics, Philosophy, and Economics major, policy discussions are rampant and inevitable. Things can really vamp up when you combine that with mandatory theology classes. 

Colby McCaskill: I believe the Bible advocates for justice. And righteousness. And grace. And forgiveness. And love. And sacrifice. And protection of life. But many of those ends can be accomplished by means that come from political action on either side of the aisle.

Julia Jensen: And again, we’re not arguing that the Bible doesn’t have any mandates, or that it is so indifferent to the ways of this world that Bible-believing Christians can vote however they choose without thinking. What I’m arguing is that Christianity advocates first and foremost of attitudes towards each other, not which party to cast the ballot for.

Colby McCaskill: And what’s more is that when we decide that only one party’s policy is the only action that is inline with these attitudes, we shrink our view of biblical justice. Of God. We put ourselves and our beliefs into boxes that we make ourselves. And then, we have to explain why the other side is not in the right box. This is the trouble I was talking about earlier. To help me get down to why these ideas of partisan politics are so dangerous, I want to introduce you to someone who is well versed in this field of study. I first watched this TED talk in language arts class, last year of highschool. Shout out to Mr. Magee. It's by a quote unquote “wrongologist” Kathryn Schulz. Here she is, talking about what being right means about others.

Kathryn Schulz: Think for a moment about what it means to feel right. It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality. And when you feel that way, you've got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they're ignorant. They don't have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they're going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn't work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they're idiots. They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn't work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. So this is a catastrophe. This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly. 

Colby McCaskill: In my opinion, In America, when we fully conflate a certain political affiliation with our view of an entirely true biblical Christianity, we demonize the other side. We end up right where Kathryn just described. We have to conclude, if this political party is always biblical, that those on the other side of the aisle are intentionally subverting Christian truths. They are evil. And that is just not the case. God is bigger than our partisan politics. He wants more from us to simply align ourselves with the elephant or the donkey. He wants us to work to make this world we love look more like the Kingdom of heaven. And sometimes that means advocating for what would be considered Republican policy. Other times that means advocating for what would be considered Democratic policies. But most of all it means putting in the effort. Digging deep into issues. Coming to conclusions about what needs to be done from an attitude of love. Not hate. It means not demonizing those who disagree with us.

Julia Jensen: And here’s the thing. This potential conflation. Of Republican politics and biblical Christianity. Was a big deal to Greg.

Gregory Thornbury: Because I was at an institution where literally, every single one of my trustees and major donors were getting on board of the Trump train. So, you know, I mean, that's why I quit.

Julia Jensen: Greg made a big decision. He decided that he could not work with those on what he called the 

Gregory Thornbury: Trump train,

Julia Jensen: To:

Gregory Thornbury: raise $10 million in cash every year, just to keep the lights on at kings.

Colby McCaskill: He wasn’t willing… and so he left. He told me that the Board of Trustees actually asked him to stay for the 2018-19 year. Greg made the decision to leave the Board. In part because of the absolute drain this fundraising was. But also, according to him, because he couldn’t handle working with a board that he said was getting on the 

Gregory Thornbury: Trump train.

Colby McCaskill: Julia left a comment on our script while we were finalizing the narrative for this episode. Actually just this afternoon.   Was Greg selfish for this? She asked. Great Question. I’ll ask it in a different way. Was this the right choice?

Julia Jensen: Exactly. Like, this was a decision to leave that was most likely based on the difficulty of the job, and his internal ethic. Republicanism had been slowly becoming more and more the de-facto party of Evangelical Christianity. And Greg thought that this was wrong. He saw his Board of Trustees going with it. And so he left.

Colby McCaskill: Are political differences worth leaving over? Could this also just be a reason to overshadow simple burnout and a desire to leave?

Julia Jensen: Because King’s did not endorse Donald Trump after Greg left. It wasn’t as if he was the big barrier to that choice. Trump ran again in 2020. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have the opportunity to.

Colby McCaskill: So what do you do when the Board of the school that you love — that you have been working tirelessly for — is supposedly tending towards a Republican Christ? Do you leave?

Julia Jensen: No.

Colby McCaskill: Yeah.

Julia Jensen: Okay, but why? And we’re off script now.

Colby McCaskill: Oh no, now we're off script, now I got to go on me. I mean, if I was Greg, and I was with this group that thought of Christianity as the through line, not as political parties as correct or one political party as evil. And then, all of a sudden everybody else starts moving towards one party…the other. I don’t know, I just feel like it would be time for me to go find a better place. “They said Jesus was conservative. Tell them that’s a lie. No, he’s not a liberal either if you think I choose a side.” To quote Lecrae. Do you know him?

Julia Jensen: I do. The rapper?

Colby McCaskill: Yeah. That’s one of my favorite lines. I think when you commit to Christ, it makes other places that commit to political sides just a little bit not worth it. That’s what I’m thinking right now. Thoughts?

Julia Jensen: Okay. Two words. He knew.

Colby McCaskill: Meaning?

Julia Jensen: He knew that if he left King’s, things would decline. And I think to do that to students and faculty who you claim to love, just because of your own political quote unquote convictions, proves that you care more about their political convictions more than Christ. And more than the school, and the people that you claim to love.

Colby McCaskill: That’s a good point. I think he gave enough time. I think when you’re fundraising 10 million dollars every year to keep a school open…

Julia Jensen: Then, if that’s true, cite that as your reason to leave.

Colby McCaskill: True. Because there is this question of: did he just want to get out? And this was the excuse? Are we just going to cite that my board was turning to Trump so that I have a card to use? I don’t think that was entirely it. I don’t think that was not it all. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to say.

Julia Jensen: What we do know is that after Greg Thornbury’s burnout, and subsequent departure from the college, a parent from the King’s Parents Advisory Council took up the burden of leadership and sought to try to patch the deficit himself. 

Colby McCaskill: That was Tim Gibson. And from 2017 onward, The King’s College operated at a significant deficit. Only this time without significant donor support. At first, it was over 6 million, eventually it got down to just over 3 million in 2021. Tim Gibson wasn’t able to fundraise that amount of money. It was too much of a deficit for a reasonable effort to patch. Which kind of really speaks to Greg, and his effort. “I’m amazed it lasted as long as it did.” Greg told me. It was an inherited problem from the old TKC, and haunted the new TKC as soon as it opened its doors in 1999. But also, Tim wasn’t able to fundraise that much because of the lack of relationships he had with mega-donors. If you want to pin the demise of the King’s College on anything, part of the autopsy report must read “Differing Opinions on Political and Christian Conflation.” 

Julia Jensen: As you heard a few episodes ago, Tim worked at building community and relating personally with the students. But then the bills came rolling in. Soon, COVID hit. And with way less donor connections compared to the Thornbury era, he found King’s in danger of closing. That’s why he turned to Primacorp.

Colby McCaskill: What’s been largely unsaid here as well is the fact that three of the college’s major donors, Richard and Helen Devos, as well as Lee Hanley, had all passed away by 2018. Though, it ought to be noted that both of the DeVoses passed after the 2016 presidential election. Even so, from the beginning, King’s has not been a financially viable school. They have brought students in and faithfully educated them until the gap in financing became too large. King’s bounced around the East Coast primarily to find a suitable site that balanced the books. They needed to find a location where accreditation was not too expensive. When King’s restarted in Manhattan, that systematic deficit was there. But it was taken care of by Campus Crusade for Christ. After Cru, it was patched annually by fundraising from deep-pocketed donors, many of them on the Board of Trustees. Throughout its lifetime, King’s was incredibly close to the changing dynamics between Christianity and politics. And then the Donald Trump presidential run highlighted it.

Julia Jensen: When Gibson took up the cross to keep King’s from financial ruin, he discovered the grim reality that this system of funds was incredibly difficult to correct. In 2021, he made the decision, out of desperation, to turn to a dishonest businessman for survival. And the end of that arrangement, in late April 2023, meant a hard look at the financial insufficiencies of the college. And, perhaps, an impromptu moment of closure. But that’s next time on Demise Of The Crown.

…

Julia Jensen: Demise Of The Crown is a production of Empire State Tribune and the Broadway & Exchange Podcast.

Colby McCaskill: This show was produced and edited by me, Colby McCaskill.

Julia Jensen: And me, Julia Jensen. Our Executive Editor is Myrian Orea. And Mindy Huspen is our Managing Editor. 

Colby McCaskill: Special thanks to Rob Bruder of Postmillennial Media for this beautifully original score. Matthew Peterson, the regular producer and host of Broadway and Exchange. And Angelina Ispir, our social media coordinator. Thank you, for listening to this bonkers long episode. As well as all who lended their time and voice to this project.