Letter from the President

We live in strange times. There seems to be crises in all our major institutions—Wall Street, housing and mortgage lending, health care, the supply of energy, academia, and journalism. This crisis pervades our entire culture. If you have any doubt about that, just look at the kinds of movies that come out of Hollywood. What is happening to America? What is left of the American dream?

At King’s, we don’t just try to respond to crisis by simply calling for improvement or by trying to make marginal changes on the surface level. We have a different way in mind to fix our failing institutions. We don’t just want to document the problem; we want to help solve the problem. We aren’t satisfied with improvements on the margin; we want to help transform through society’s core institutions. We are here to make a difference.

The King’s College is quickly becoming one of the finest Christian liberal arts colleges in America. Not only do we aim to educate our students with “the best that is being thought and said,” if I can borrow a phrase from Matthew Arnold. We prepare our students for careers where they will help shape and lead the culture-making institutions of our nation.

That’s one reason why we’re located in New York City, the capital of the world. Major political, economic, and cultural decisions that shape our society are made right here. It is necessary to be in the capital of the world in order to understand the world, and only when we understand the world can we change it. That’s what we’re about at King’s: changing the world.

Everything we do is shaped around this vision. Take our academic programs, for instance. The core of a King’s education centers on politics, philosophy and economics. Some people may wonder why we focus on PP&E. Politics is about who is in charge and for what purposes. Economics is about how we eat, survive, and prosper. Philosophy is about the what and the why: what is truth, what is justice, why is there a universe, what is happiness, what is the purpose of life? These are practical questions, and by figuring them out, students are better prepared not only to have successful careers but also to live full, happy, and meaningful lives.

At King’s, we pursue academic excellence for the sake of building God’s kingdom as an unapologetically Christian college. That doesn’t mean we try to win arguments solely by citing passages from the Bible. Rather, we are Christians who recognize that we live in secular society and who understand that reason is not opposed to revelation—that reason is a valuable tool to discover and affirm the truths of God and creation. Moreover, we believe that the Bible isn’t merely about the next world, but that it has important things to say about economics, about war and peace, about ethics, and about human nature.

King’s is a new kind of Christian school. We don’t want to be of the world, but we do want to be in the world, influencing through the institutions that shape the world. While other Christian institutions shelter their students from the power centers of society, we prepare them to take their rightful place. While other colleges seek to protect and shelter faith, we go beyond that and teach students how to live from a Christian foundation in the ‘language’ of society’s strategic institutions. Not only can we defend our faith, but our faith informs every aspect of life and society.

All my best,

Andy Mills
President, The King’s College