Our Philosophy of Education

What Difference Does it Make that a College is Secular?
More than 98% of college bound students attend secular universities, not Christian colleges. If it does not make any difference that a college is secular, then who cares what kind of college Christian students attend. But if it does make a significant difference, what is that difference?

Of primary importance is the reality that secularism is profoundly irreconcilable with Christianity. Many academics in the university would have students believe that “secular” means “neutral.” In reality, it means, “no God allowed.” Of course, this does not mean that all “god talk” has been eliminated from colleges. It is acceptable to speak about god as long as he is impotent or irrelevant. Feminists have free reign to discuss god because they are searching for new female deities—ancient fertility goddesses, the witch goddess Diana, or Mother Earth—to replace male ones. This is acceptable to secularists because it proves that any god will do. Secularists also tolerate it when minorities speak about god, excusing it as an irrational cultural impulse.

Even if secularism simply meant that no religion, denomination, or sect would be given preferential treatment, it still does not mean that secularism is neutral or a level playing field. The worldview presented in the classroom is secular, and religious worldviews are often excluded or, even worse, they are criticized and ridiculed without any opportunity for a thoughtful debate. When a secular professor teaches her students, she presents a secular worldview without thinking about whether her approach is evenhanded. Secular professors, many of whom are men and women of good will, are actually surprised to discover that another view, held by credentialed people of faith, even exists. They dismiss Christianity as “religious,” which to them implicitly means “anti-scientific or mythical.”

Following the secularist’s logic, if the Bible is full of myths and superstition, then the accounts of Adam and Eve and creation are mythical and anti-scientific. Human beings are just animals, moderately high on the evolutionary scale but not intrinsically more valuable than any other species. News reports periodically illustrate this viewpoint. The secularist will devote an extraordinary amount of time and money to save beached pilot whales, while working feverishly to keep Congress from banning partial birth abortion. Some activists even call humans a virus or a pest that needs to be “managed” like the mosquito population. They argue that people are a plague on the earth, endangering the ecosystem by building homes and businesses.

Another implication of the secularist argument is that, because evil did not come into the world through human choice in the Garden of Eden but through accidents of nature or ownership of private property, there is no universal right and wrong, and there is no such thing as sin. Instead, people must choose their own moral standards. Unfortunately, these choices have led to the degradation of morality in American life. It only takes a step of logic from our current immoral state to conclude that Jesus cannot be the son of God. Some professors assert that Jesus, who never married and performed tricks, was probably just a homosexual magician. Furthermore, he did not need to die for the sins of the world, because there is no heaven or hell. Christianity is a delusion, and Christians are dupes. Truth be told, believers are suckers.

A Comprehensive Biblical Worldview
Many authors compare the biblical worldview, or any worldview, to the lenses in a pair of glasses. This metaphor implies that just like lenses affect clarity of vision, a worldview and the set of assumptions on which it is built affect human perception and interpretation of the world. The lens metaphor is helpful because it correctly suggests that deeply held beliefs and assumptions about the world influence personal conclusions about such areas as public policy, morality, social justice and the economy.

If human babies are merely animals and the growth in the human population is unsustainable, then abortion is reasonable, even necessary. If children are creations of God with eternal souls, then every one of them is sacred. If making a profit is immoral, then any profitable business is corrupt; and any nation that promotes capitalism is getting rich at the expense of the exploited, or so the arguments go. On the other hand, if job creation grants dignity to employees through real work and provides them with the best opportunity for a successful future, then businesses that create jobs are commendable, even virtuous. Same facts; different worldviews.

Although the lens metaphor is useful, it can also be misleading. It can lead to the belief that worldview change is as simple as changing glasses: off with the secular, on with the. It incorrectly implies that there is little thought or work required to construct a worldview. In truth getting started is relatively easy, but developing a comprehensive biblical worldview requires hard work and education. The other problem with the lens metaphor is that there is no one to adjudicate between the lenses. Who decides whose eyeglasses clarify and focus, and whose blur, diffuse, or even blind? Whose worldview is correct? We need another metaphor.

The biblical worldview emanates from the Bible. Almost all secular universities have concluded that a worldview based on the Bible is too limiting. In one sense, they are correct. They are correct that the Bible short-circuits the search for truth by giving the answers in advance. It uniquely answers a few critically important questions that, of necessity, call for revelation: “Is there a God, and is he knowable?” “Are human beings the creations of God or accidents of nature?” “Is there a universal standard of right and a wrong?” “What is the human condition?” “Does God have a plan?” “Does this world matter?”

Sometimes, however, limitations can be necessary and useful. Spanning Black Canyon, the Hoover Dam put limits on the mighty Colorado River. These “limits” are put in place to produce 2,074,000 kilowatts of power. Open the floodgates, and the power of a wild and untamed waterway is harnessed. In the same way, men and women can draw on the awesome power and mind of God by means of the floodgates of a carefully constructed and thoughtful biblical worldview.

The biblical worldview, therefore, is more aptly likened to a system of global positioning satellites. Made possible with sophisticated engineering, they map all that they survey, and, by employing them, people can always determine exactly where they are. The biblical worldview ennobles men and women, describing them as far more than specks in the universe. Instead, they are created for a purpose. The biblical worldview can also be compared to night vision goggles, which enable the wearer to see danger amidst the darkness. Or, in the same way that the Rosetta Stone enabled the French scholar, Jean Francois Champollion, to decipher an unknown and ancient language, the biblical worldview makes it possible to decode what God wants to say to man. Each of these metaphors highlights the fact that time, labor, invention, training, and drive are needed to create the biblical worldview and to use it to solve problems and understand the world. Secular intellectuals recognize that years of study and billions of dollars are needed to understand and apply their worldview. Christians are shortsighted to conclude that theirs requires any less.

One final and particularly robust metaphor for the biblical worldview likens it to a nuclear power plant that manages nuclear fission to heat and light the cities of the world. It requires considerable education and ingenuity just to design and construct the power plant. While these plants are impressive, they are not built to be admired. All of this sophisticated technology is necessary to tap the enormous amount of energy that is contained in a very small amount of enriched uranium, while producing relatively few pollutants.

Similarly, a worldview is constructed to pull a grand array of discoveries and innovations out of the human brain, but, like any means of generating energy, many worldviews produce pollution. That is, when implemented, their ideas result in incomprehensible human suffering: starvation, slavery, disease, poverty, corruption, and death. These unintended negative side effects are the direct consequences of the flaws inherent in their basic assumptions. While the secular university has devoted considerable time to developing its worldview, albeit one that has produced immeasurable social, political, and economic hardship, Christians have also developed a comprehensive worldview, but it is a power plant that reduces pollutants, a worldview that does not generate misery but rather hope.

It is important to give credit where credit is due. In many fields, the secular and biblical worldviews are similar or even identical. Unless science and reason are rejected, a well-constructed bridge or airplane is the same no matter what your worldview is. In other words, there are no such things as Christian bridges, computers or space stations. On the other hand, the chasm is wide and deep between worldviews when it comes to improving people and governments, creating vigorous economies, and fashioning a just society. Furthermore, the secular worldview is powerful in its own right. The mind of man was created by God, and he gave it vast potential. It is not surprising that humans can accomplish, discover, invent, and design great things by using their minds. Then again, the mind is flawed. It is plagued by what the renowned philosopher Bernard Longergan in his book INSIGHT called scotosis, which means the darkening of the intellect due to The Fall.

Universal Principles
This catalogue is not original. All colleges and universities declare that their mission is to educate leaders. And everyone recognizes that these leaders need to be statesmen and not just politicians. Everyone would choose Winston Churchill over Neville Chamberlain, leaders over party apparatchiks. But what is a statesman? And how does a statesman differ from a politician?

A person schooled in the best of the Great Books understands that a statesman, by definition, is a leader who embraces universal principles— ideas that are true for all people, in all times, and in all cultures—and has the courage and wisdom to implement them, without deferring to the whims of public opinion. The person who lacks knowledge of and commitment to these principles, is just another politician, governing by polls and public consensus.

Most professors at secular universities doubt that universal principles even exist; in fact, they have zero tolerance for them. According to the vast majority of such professors, the idea that universal principles actually exist is patently dangerous and can only produce intolerance and conflict. Of course, this does not prevent them from asserting their own principles. This means that if a student chooses to attend an elite university, he will have an excellent opportunity to become a successful politician. But if his goal is to prepare for statesmanship, he will have to look elsewhere.

The intentional focus of The King’s College is on equipping students with the universal principles and discernment needed to become leaders of courage and character, to become statesmen and not just politicians. Since the Bible is a dense mass of universal principles, at The King’s College the Bible will compete head to head with the principles contained in the Great Books. Moreover, students must also acquire sufficient detailed knowledge along with skills in writing, speaking, and understanding money and power so as to evaluate and challenge the generally accepted ideas of the current generation. In summary, The King’s College is an environment where students will learn to lead with courage and character.

One more consideration. If a college provides education in the Great Books alone, students will encounter first principles but not necessarily the truths found in the Bible about God and idols, truth and goodness, heaven and hell, right and wrong, rights and responsibilities, and loving one’s enemies. If God wrote the rulebook for this universe, and life is meaningless without it, then it is foolish for professors to ignore what the Bible says about this world. On the other hand, if you study the Bible solely within the confines of church and family, you run the risk of living in a spiritual ghetto where, at best, the gospel affects one’s heart, home, and family but has little to do with government, business, education, the media, the arts, the courts, or society at large. Today, there are too many such ghettos.

Of course, it is not enough to just master universal principles. Leaders who only grasp universal principles are idealists. And as Hippolyte Taine has said, “Nothing is easier than the perfecting of the imaginary.” There is another necessary component of leadership, which St. Paul describes as “discernment.” The ancients called it prudence—the ability to apply the “knowledge of the good” to the real world. The result was statesmanship. Jesus said it is “the willingness to observe whatever he commanded.” His commands are the fixed principles and “to observe” them is to build life on a foundation of rock and not sand, resulting in a life well lived and a society well formed.

Majoring in the Majors
The vision for The King’s College is highly focused. The program concentrates on a relatively few number of majors, called the leadership or ruling disciplines. The limited focus allows for high quality. Furthermore, each of the King’s majors corresponds to one of America’s centers of cultural influence. This concentration and correlation is one of the things that makes us different.

The mission of King’s is to prepare outstanding students for leadership in America’s strategic national institutions: the schools, business, government, the media, the courts, the arts and the church. Graduates will then be commissioned as ambassadors of Jesus Christ to lead and serve the world. In a nutshell, this is what King’s is all about.

King’s is not the place to study physical therapy, as useful as that is. There are also better places to study engineering. But King’s is the place to learn to lead, to understand and excel within the centers of power and influence and to have the opportunity to make a difference.

Most colleges and universities offer an educational smorgasbord with literally hundreds of majors. There is considerable pressure to select one as soon as possible. In reality, however, there is way too much emphasis placed on choosing a major, as if the simple act of selecting a major guarantees that education takes place and that students will be able to get a job and succeed in life. Honesty, hard work, excellent skills, good ideas and passion undoubtedly go much further.

Consequently, selecting a major is much less important than other more crucial considerations. Learning to write well and speak persuasively ought to be primary no matter what major is chosen. Understanding money and the benefits of wealth creation as well as the power and the proper limits of government are also vital. These skills and insights open up a world of opportunities well beyond the narrow confines of a major. Even so, these is no substitute for a comprehensive biblical worldview, knowledge of universal principles, and mature spiritual disciplines if you are to know what to do when you gain entry to the corridors of power.

The Stetson Leadership Center
Charlie and Bebe Stetson established the leadership center at The King’s College. Bebe grew up in New York City and attended Bryn Mawr College, and Charlie grew up in a prominent banking family and graduated from Yale (class of ’42). After graduation, Charlie could have secured a safe assignment during World War II. Instead, he joined the navy and served on a PT boat, vessels that were considered expendable.

After his military service, he met and married Bebe and spent his life working on Wall Street. After retirement, Charlie and Bebe were busier than ever. They played tennis into their eighties; traveled the world; helped to establish Outward Bound in South Africa; supported Prison Fellowship; and they were among the first to believe in the mission of The King’s College. Charlie also wrote Men Without Equal In Their Times and was working on other book projects until his death in August of 2002. He died of a heart attack while out on a 10 mile hike.

Charlie and Bebe serve as examples to the entire King’s College community.

The Seven Ideals for Students

Making A Better World
You need to understand that all colleges and universities, including Christian colleges, teach theories on how to make a better world and not just how to make a better living. And you will soon realize that the secular view and the Christian view are diametrically opposed to each other.

Machiavelli, a secular intellectual who wrote in the 15 th century, said that Christianity offers a wonderful prescription for a better world but only if everyone is an angel. Since people are not angels and heaven is doubtful, in this world we need a more realistic solution, effectual leadership or what is now called real politick.

The rejection of angels is actually the rejection of the idea that there are universal goods or ideals to which all people should aspire. In fact, most intellectuals in the universities reject the notion that there are higher ideals to which people ought to strive. Most believe that they lead to intolerance and conflict so they have zero tolerance for them. On the other hand, we at The King’s College along with those who follow in the Classical and Christian traditions believe that seeking these ideals leads to noble actions and purpose in life as well as happiness and fulfillment and success.

Having rejected human ideals, secular intellectuals are content to identify what they think are the causes of societal dysfunction, especially those that provoke conflict, and address them. Secular professors see themselves as doctors, whose responsibility it is to remedy society’s ills. After diagnosing society’s diseases, they prescribe a treatment and work hand in hand with government policy makers, who, like pharmacists, distribute the drugs. In point of fact, the secular answer to this question serves as the mold for the social sciences, especially in the arenas of economics and politics.

One way to understand the implications of the secular solution is to consider a historical case, which documents the implementation of secularism. In the early twentieth century, Russia ’s intellectual elite adopted secular ideas, and a Marxist regime was installed, ending a thousand years of Christianity. Their plans were conceived in economic idealism (Not believing in human ideals, they instituted economic ideals.), yet, when implemented, they degenerated into barbaric totalitarianism. Grandiose promises of plenty for each yielded grinding poverty for all. Given the fact that these intellectuals embraced a shining moral vision, what went wrong?

After studying the causes of the Russian revolution, Richard Pipes, the Baird Professor of History at Harvard University, blames the European and Russian intelligentsia for designing a regime that unrepentantly killed 30 million innocent people and enslaved hundreds of millions more. In an insightful analysis, Pipes describes the ideology of the intellectual, which, in the end, was responsible for the abject failure of the Soviet experiment. It is, he writes,

An ideology based on the conviction that man is not a unique creature endowed with an immortal soul, but a material compound shaped entirely by his environment: from which premise it follows that by reordering man’s social, economic, and political environment in accord with ‘rational’ precepts, it is possible to turn out a new race of perfectly rational human beings…This belief elevates intellectuals, as bearers of rationality, to the status of social engineer and justifies their ambition to displace the ruling elite.

In The Russian Revolution, Pipes also traces the history of the intelligentsia, concluding that the Soviet Union ’s architects were not alone in their eagerness to conduct social, political, and economic experiments on an unsuspecting populace. Francis Bacon “asserted that the principles of physical science were applicable to human affairs,” meaning that people can be studied like guinea pigs or rabbits. John Locke concluded that “it is only by eliminating free will that man could be made the subject of scientific inquiry.” Claude Helvetius made the startling conclusion that by controlling man's environment, “it was possible to determine what he thought and how he behaved.” A student of Helvetius, Jeremy Bentham declared that morality and lawmaking were in essence the same science. Therefore, man can be made virtuous through laws.

In short, intellectuals think of human beings as laboratory rats for social experimentation. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The Temper of Our Time, the “ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.” Dr. Frankensteins are afoot in the secular university, looking for candidates to turn into their new men. While it is not solely or always directly responsible for the mischief caused by attempts to reengineer societies and economies, the modern university is the fountainhead of all secular thought, and it educates the world’s political and economic leaders, who then implement the ideas they were taught.

What is so seductive about these ideas that they have been able to permeate and animate the core of the modern secular university? The answer is that it is heady business to rewrite the history of the world. Occasionally well-intended but too frequently self-serving, intellectuals continually draft blueprints for remaking the world, assuming (on behalf of all mankind) the mission of solving society’s problems. Trafficking in the assumptions of atheism and Darwinian evolution, it is this enterprise in ameliorism—making laws to remake people—that is the moral vision of the intellectual.

Throughout history, secular thinkers have sought to explain the origin of what Christians identify as evil. These explanations guide and ultimately justify their efforts to mold society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who proposed one of the earliest secular theories of the origin of evil, attributes its introduction into the world to inequality, primarily economic inequities.

In Discourses on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, Rousseau argues that there are two kinds of inequality. The first kind, which existed in the primitive, evolutionary world, was benign. In this world, humans were unequal because some were older, stronger, or smarter than others. These benign inequalities became malignant, according to Rousseau, when a ‘damn businessman’ invented the concept of private property, thereby creating the second kind of inequality. In this new world, the older, smarter, and stronger humans could use their superior position, strength, and intellect to fence off an unequal amount of property for themselves. Taking more than their fair share, Rousseau alleges, they became wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Those who had less or no property began to resent those who had more, and the original sin of envy was born. Over time, envy turned into resentment; resentment became hatred; hatred bred conflict; conflict escalated into war; and war in a nuclear age will end the world as we know it.

Evil (meaning economic inequality), like some mythical creature, bounded forth from the head of private property. Until the moment when private property was created, evil did not exist because there was no envy; humans did not need to compete because everyone was satisfied with what they had. This audacious and persuasive falsehood pervades the modern university and too much of the world: whenever a person has more than his fair share of material goods, he acquired them unjustly, and this ‘robbery’ inevitably leads to conflict and war. Merit is a myth; war is the product of unequal distribution of wealth.

Rousseau concludes that people are essentially good but have been spoiled by the invention of private property. Envy, in Rousseau’s view, is an economic condition, which means that sin originates from an economic system and not the human heart. The system is evil and not the person. Adam and Eve did not commit the first sin because that is a fairy story. Instead, the businessman is the culprit. By inventing private property, the ‘businessman’ brought all of the bitter fruits of envy into the world.

Rousseau’s view was the forerunner of Marxism-Leninism, a system of governance that subjugated a billion people in the 20th century. Embracing Rousseau’s idea that private property is the root of evil, Marxist-Leninists called for the overthrow of democratic capitalism through revolution. Even though the Berlin Wall has fallen and the Soviet Union has collapsed, Rousseau’s views are still influential. When scholars accuse America of becoming rich at the expense of developing countries, Rousseau’s ideas are at work. The words “oil,” “land,” “business,” “the United States,” “the rich,” “white males,” and “the West” have become synonymous with the exploitation of the poor; they mean that someone has gotten more than their fair share. It also means that the government must step in and make more laws and regulations to enforce greater equality in society.

The American establishment, including the university, is enamored with Rousseau’s views on the origins of evil and their fundamental claim that political and economic institutions are to blame for the evil in the world—not people. Unless they are in power, people are victimized by the system. There is no such thing as personal responsibility for those who are not in power, namely women, minorities, the poor, and the third world. This explains why the intellectual offspring of Rousseau and Hobbes constantly call for the overthrow of the West, capitalism, the Catholic Church, men, marriage or any other perceived power structure. It also explains why so many humanities and social science professors teach that only those in power can be evil, only men can be sexists, only whites can be racists, and only America can be imperialistic. It is why women are considered a minority when they outnumber men, and it is why so many feminists consider marriage to be rape and dating to be prostitution.

The equality promised by the Declaration of Independence—equality of opportunity—has been displaced by strident demands for political and economic equality and a campaign to hold the reigns of power in order to enforce this agenda. Rousseau has won. The Bible, even though it is a superior explanation of the causes of evil, is a dark horse. Followers of Christ are vigorously entering the race.

Christianity embodies a spiritual explanation of and solution to the problem of evil. God created the world. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and unleashed evil into the world. God sent his son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins by dying in our place. Becoming Christians, over time, makes us better people. This account is so simple that a child could understand and accept it. Most intellectuals reject it for the same reason. It calls for faith in God and not man. It lays the blame for the evil in the world solely and completely on man. As Alexander Solzenitsyn put it, “The line between good and evil courses through the very heart of man.” Every kind of evil, from war to racial hatred, spills out of the heart of man.

The biblical worldview advances the truth that political and economic systems are corrupt because people have a penchant for evil—not the other way around. Most important, no one is immune from evil: not the rich, the poor, ministers, professors, politicians, whites, businessmen, minorities, women, social activists, journalists, Hollywood actors, or good people. Not even the intelligentsia. Consequently, changing the system is not the solution. Overthrowing those in power for someone else cannot solve the problem of human nature. As Edmund Burke confirmed, “There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.”

The mature believer should be able to see through these issues. According to the Bible, the primary marker of maturity is discernment, not just an extensive knowledge of scripture. In the book of Hebrews, St. Paul contrasts the mature believer with the immature one:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

Developing discernment requires a thorough understanding of the Bible (solid food), as well as practice, and what Paul calls “the training of the senses.” The word training comes from the Greek word from which we get our word “gymnastics” and senses comes from a Greek word that means the “organs of perception.” For too many Christians, education has become, at best, a brain dump or knowledge transfer and, at its worst, propaganda. Instead, it should be an Olympics of the mind, in which the comprehensive biblical worldview competes with the comprehensive secular worldview. Through arduous practice, it will yield both maturity and discernment in believers. In a world of secular propaganda, explosions of information, and moral dilemmas, discernment is in short supply.

The discerning Christian understands the secular competition and confidently teaches that the biblical worldview—the gospel—is a more accurate explanation of the facts and a more powerful way to change world. Permeate America ’s strategic national institutions with the universal principles of the Bible and the best of the Great Books, and statesmen will rise to the top. Then focus on changing the hearts of leaders, who will protect the rights and freedoms of all. Share the gospel with people, and the world will change.

The secular universities will continue to prepare students to reach the world with their anti-gospel. Secular professors will continue to teach that evil—poverty, war, injustice, and inequality—is caused by “the system” and that people are its victims. They will experiment on people as if they are animals and recommend various forms of coercion to produce the behavior they cannot achieve through persuasion. Allow this to persist and the world will continue to descend into moral totalitarianism. Intellectuals of faith have a better way.

The Seven Ideals of the college to which we hope you will aspire for the rest of your life are as follows:

1. Life Transforming - That you will become the kind of person you were created to be
2. Leadership Building - That you learn to lead from universal principles
3. World Focused - That you will invest your life in people
4. Cause Centered - That you will live for a cause greater than yourself
5. Idea Guided - That you will understand the ideas that have consequences
6. Risk Taking - That you will risk and overcome failure in the pursuit of a significant life
7. Results Oriented - That you will seize your purpose in life and accomplish it within your own generation