A Brief History of The King’s College

In 1938, Percy B. Crawford founded The King’s College. Like the founders of Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and most of the first and best colleges, Crawford was a follower of Jesus Christ and a man of rare vision. In the yearbook published for the first graduating class in 1942, his students and colleagues quoted one of the works of Tennyson (1) to describe him:

The fire of God fills him.
One never saw his like.
There lives no greater leader.

Associates frequently employed powerful adjectives to describe him: “Dynamic, visionary, energetic, he inspires his hearers with enthusiasm for the things of God; his weekly chapel messages to the student have been a means of renewed desire for greater service and consecration.

Beginning in a storefront Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, Dr. Crawford rigged a diving board to extend over the adjacent Washington Square and, standing precariously, preached a powerful Christian gospel to all who would listen. Later he developed a radio program that eventually became a coast to coast broadcast. Then came a singing group that served as a warm-up act for his preaching; then camps; then a book of the month club; a bookstore; fishing clubs; and a magazine.

In 1949, he initiated YOUTH ON THE MARCH, the first nationwide television broadcast of any kind, for which he was honored by CNN on the 50th anniversary of its broadcast. Dr. Crawford wanted students to experience a muscular kind of Christianity exemplified by vigorous sports programs, scientific inquiry, and artistic expression. For him, Sunday was a day that informed and empowered Monday through Friday.

In 1955, Dr. Crawford moved King’s to Briarcliff Manor, New York, and his friend Billy Graham served on the Board of Trustees for several years. When Dr. Crawford died tragically of a heart attack in 1960, Dr. Robert Cook, the host of a popular radio broadcast, was inaugurated as the college’s second president. Years after Dr. Cook’s death, his radio program is well known through the Northeast.

In 1985, Dr. Friedhelm Radandt, a former professor at the University of Chicago and President of Northwestern College in Iowa, was inaugurated as the third president of The King’s College. Thereafter, in 1997, Dr. Radandt led the merger of The King’s College with Campus Crusade for Christ, a worldwide organization of more then 26,000 staff in 191 countries with annual revenues of more than $500 million. In 1999, The King’s College and Campus Crusade for Christ merged with Northeastern Bible College, formerly of Essex Fells, New Jersey. Dr. Radandt moved the campus to state-of-the-art city facilities in the New York City. Under Dr. Radandt’s leadership, The King’s College implemented a vision for equipping leaders from the city and the world to influence America’s strategic national institutions.

On January 1, 2003, the Board of Trustees of The King’s College selected J. Stanley Oakes, Jr. to be the fourth president of the College. President Oakes was selected as president after nearly 20 years of work with college and university professors. He developed a network of more than 14,000 professors from 950 universities hosting hundreds of lectures and debates on scores of campuses, on topics as diverse as Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind and the Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God. President Oakes brings a wealth of experience in the world of competitive ideas.

(1) Tennyson, Lord Alfred, Idylls of the King (Lancelot and Elaine), published 1859, London, England.