EmblemTHE KING'S COLLEGE MAGAZINE

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Emblem is a vehicle for the King’s community to reflect on its past, present, and future. The stories

and ideals of a community are gathered up in their emblem, the image they choose to represent

themselves. The King’s College chose for its emblem an image of a lion: a constant reminder of our charge to glorify and draw our courage from Christ, the Lion of Judah. Through this biannual magazine, we see how the seeds of

past faithfulness bear fruit in the present.

Each issue of Emblem explores the legacy of King's through a new thematic lens.

Emblem

President Gregory A. Thornbury, PhD.

Vice President Kimberly Thornbury, PhD.

Editor Alissa Wilkinson

Assistant Editors Emily Schatz, Eric Corpus

Design Natalie Nakamura

Features Gregory A. Thornbury, Joseph Loconte,

Sharon (Hedgepeth) Lunden, Anthony Bradley

Photography Eric Corpus, Mark Burger, Abigail Jennings,

Angel Boyd

Alumni alumni@tkc.edu

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“Clearly, at King’s I received not only a degree, but entry into a unique

community of saints.

”

C O V E R P H O T O B Y J O E S P I T E R I :

Interregnum XII Final DebateHouse of Winston Churchill vs. House of Margaret Thatcher

Stories, Comments, Art communications@tkc.edu

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nyone who has studied the his-tory of Christianity knows that it is a story of martyrs. The early church father Tertullian wrote that the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” and certainly we realize that their sacrifices long ago secured so many of our freedoms. Although the rise of West-

ern Civilization has reversed the trend of persecution in significant ways in Europe and America, we understand that the “red martyrs” are still with us: in Syria, in Nigeria, and North Korea. Such aware-ness can lead to paralyzing sorrow. What can we, as a Christian academic commu-nity, do to bring the peace of Christ to the world in our time? Certainly we can support those organizations advocating for intervention to stop Christian geno-cide in war torn countries.

But must also keep in mind that once in the history of the West, there were Irish Christians who came to be known as “green martyrs.” These were the monks of the fifth century A.D. who brought arts, letters, and learning to the once-barbaric pagan peoples of Ireland.

Dear Alumni, Students, Parents,

and Friends of The King’s College,

A At that time, child sacrifice and bestial-ity were cultural norms. But when St. Pat-rick and his ascetic followers brought the faith of Jesus Christ to the Irish people, they did so through giving up their lives in order to cultivate and save their adopted homeland. This “green” revolution was accomplished by translating Latin classics of Virgil, Horace, and Marcus Aurelius into the Celtic tongue – right alongside new versions of Scripture. It proved to be an unbeatable combination. Ireland flour-ished and became a light to the world.

Here at The King’s College, we want to inspire the same sort of green revolution by producing students and cheering on alumni who give themselves away for the life of the world. That was the vision of the first iteration of The King’s College under the visionary leadership of youth evangelist Percy Crawford in 1938, and that thread runs right through our mis-sion today.

In this first issue of Emblem, we look at what shapes and inspires a community of green revolutionaries through the lens of our own community. Dr. Joe Loconte writes on how the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis shaped those

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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

two writers as they served the world through their books. Dr. Anthony Bradley takes a look at what human flourishing looks like. Sharon Lunden ’89 writes about the community at the King’s campus in Briarcliff Manor. Photographs from events at King’s—past and present—remind us of God’s grace to our community over many decades.

This issue of Emblem serves as a teaser trailer for the first big issue of the magazine, which will arrive in your inbox in the fall of 2016. In the future, you will hear more student success stories and keep tabs on alumni who engage New York City, America, and the globe as shining lights.

We’d love to hear what you think. Thank you for joining us in this mission.

All joy and courage,

Gregory Alan Thornbury, PhD.President, The King’s College

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FEATURE I

which the powers of sin and death are overcome and the life of the new cre-ation is inaugurated, moving towards the eschatological glorification of the whole cosmos.” Unless human life is in harmony with God’s redemptive story, true human flourishing is impossible.

Why are human beings important to God’s story? Theologian Verna Nona Harrison argues that as humans, we were designed to unite our wills with God’s will. In this way, together with God we can do good and creative things as stewards over the whole creation. We’ve been given the capacity to use the arts to disclose beauty that is ultimately from God and to exercise practical creativity in crafts, agriculture, manufacturing, and technology—skills that enable the world’s economy. Our economic exchanges and business endeavors enable humans to share with one another and meet real needs.

So human flourishing demands that

uman beings were created to flourish within the con-text of God’s good creation. The vocation to flourish in union and communion with the Triune God was the original design for human life, and even after sin entered the world, this didn’t change. In order for us to truly love our neigh-bors we must want for them what God desires

for them because they bear his image. And so to be faithful neighbors, we

must know God’s story, know why human beings are important to that story, and understand the other basic requirements of human flourishing.

What is God’s story? That is, what is God doing in his world? Theodore G. Stylianopoulos observes that God’s story comes as “the good news of God’s saving work in Christ and the Spirit by

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The Contours of

Human Flourishing

Being members of a community means seeking one another’s flourishing. But what does that mean?

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B Y A N T H O N Y B R A D L E Y

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people have the proper moral, social, political, spiritual, and economic con-texts to be truly human in God’s design.

Studies also show that we flourish when we are truly known—that is, when we are vulnerably loved, cared for, and connected with a full embrace of our flaws and imperfections. We need people who believe in us and encourage us toward virtue.

The family is the first sphere of this type of unconditional love. The family is where children learn that they are valued and worthy of love, belonging, and con-nection because they bear the image and likeness of the Triune God.

We flourish when we practice the art of self-discipline. In a recent study at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman reported that self-discipline is a stronger predictor of academic performance than IQ. Self-discipline not only predicted academic achievement but also school attendance, hours spent on homework, amount spent watching television, and more. Self-discipline is a classic Christian virtue that allows us to delay gratification in order to do what we ought to do even if we do not feel like doing it at that time.

We flourish when we practice the art of contentment. Contentment allows to us to be at ease with our current circum-

stances even when they are not ideal. It frees us to appreciate what we have rather than what we lack. Contentment purges our lives of anxiety-producing emotions, like jealousy and envy.

Finally, we flourish when we practice the art of gratitude. In a 2014 Forbes magazine article, Amy Morn highlights proven ways that gratitude contributes to human flourishing. Studies show that gratitude creates more opportunities for relationships, improves physical and emotional health, enhances our empa-thy and reduces aggression. Gratitude improves sleep and self-perception, and gives us the capacity to exercise resilience after traumatic experiences.

Living in community means loving our neighbors and seeking their well-being. That call gives us opportunities at home and in the marketplace to contribute to the flourishing of others. In that call, we let God use us to bring about his plans for the entire cosmos. †

Dr. Anthony Bradley is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Pro-gram in Religious and Theological Studies at King’s. He is also Director of the Center for the Study of Human Flourishing, a research fellow at the Acton Institute, and author of many articles and books.

“In order for us to truly love our neighbors we must want for them what God desires for

them because they bear his image.

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Interregnum XII: House of Winston Churchill

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P h o t o : E r i c C o r p u s

Tolkien, Lewis, and the

Gift of Friendship

Two faithful writers give us lessons in the grace that comes through friendship.

J O S E P H L O C O N T E

n the 1930s at Oxford University, two friends and academics who shared a love for mythology—J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis—found themselves bemoaning the modern works being pro-duced in the years after the First World War. Both men were soldiers in the Great War, and many in their generation emerged from the conf lict

deeply disillusioned with the ideals and institutions of the West. The old ideas about virtue, valor, and religion seemed to vanish into the industrialized slaugh-ter of trench warfare. As described by Erich Remarque in his bestselling work, All Quiet on the Western Front, many soldiers would return to civilian life “weary, broken, burnt out, rootless and without hope.”

Yet Tolkien and Lewis resisted the prevailing mood of pessimism and

agnosticism. “If they don’t write the kind of books we want to read,” Lewis announced to Tolkien, “we shall have to write them ourselves.”

Thus began a collaboration that would transform their lives and careers. Over the next three decades they wrote epic and mythic tales of the clash between good and evil. They reintroduced into the popular imagination the themes of heroism, faith, and sacrifice for a noble cause. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, while Lewis produced The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, and numerous other works of fiction and prose. Given the massive and enduring influence of their literary output, it is hard to think of a more consequential friendship in the twentieth century.

The quality of the relationship between Tolkien and Lewis offers us some tre-mendous lessons in Christian faithful-ness in a time of struggle and doubt. For one thing, both authors used their

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personal experience of combat—despite its horrors and deprivations—to draw attention to the grace that comes to us through friendship.

As Lewis biographer Alan Jacobs observes, friendship is one of the most significant themes in The Chronicles of Narnia. Indeed, it could be argued that friendship replaces romance as the pre-eminent expression of love in Lewis’s stories. In The Chronicles of Narnia, it flourishes between the children (the “sons and daughters of Adam”); between these children and the noble Narnians (the myriad of talking animals and myth-ological beasts); and, supremely, between Aslan, the great Lion, and all who serve him in love and obedience.

“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue,” wrote Lewis. “The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” In the world of Narnia—a world ravaged by war—its essential role in human happi-ness is affirmed throughout.

The concept of friendship amid the suffering of war is one of the great themes of The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, the bond of friendship between Sam

Gamgee and Frodo Baggins is one of the moral triumphs of the work. Remember when they are at the threshold of Mount Doom, near the very end of their quest to destroy the Ring of Power? They are weak from thirst and exhaustion. They are nearly overwhelmed by the desolation of the landscape. Frodo, weakened by the great burden of carrying the Ring, begins to crawl on his hands.

Sam looked at him and wept in his heart, but no tears came to his dry and stinging eyes. “I said I’d carry him, if it broke my back,” he muttered, “and I will!”

“Come, Mr. Frodo!” he cried. “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he’ll go.”

It is a good bet that only men who knew friendships of this kind—who experienced them on the field of com-bat—could write passages of such grit, nobility, and courage. After the war, Tolkien and Lewis sought to recapture something like the comradeship that sustained them during the crisis years of 1914-18. At Oxford they launched the Inklings, the group of friends and fellow

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scholars who met weekly—Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and the Child pub over beer and Thursday evenings in Lewis’s college rooms over various drinks—to discuss their works.

For sixteen years these men gathered to read, recite, argue, and laugh togeth-er. They met faithfully, even during the darkest days of the Second World War. Lewis read aloud many of his most important works during these gatherings. “What I owe them is incalculable,” he acknowledged. “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”

Such was the quality of their friend-ship: as with no one else, Tolkien dared to expose one of the great passions of his life, the construction of his epic trilogy, to the critical eye of his longtime friend. He read out loud virtually every chapter of The Lord of the Rings to Lewis, who became wholly invested in the project. “He was for long my only audience,” Tolkien explained. “But for his inter-est and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.”

Like few other writers over the last century, Tolkien and Lewis show us what

friendship can look like when it reaches for a high purpose and is watered by the streams of sacrifice, loyalty, and love. Their experience reminds us that great friendship is a gift born of adversity: it is made possible by the common struggle against the world’s darkness.

“Most gracious host, it was said to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for,” Frodo tells Faramir. “Certainly I have looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good.”

Against some of the most powerful trends of their culture, Tolkien and Lewis chose to turn the evil of the Great War—a vortex of suffering and death—to great good. Their achievement points us to a source of strength and hope that can transcend the darkest shadows in our day. †

Dr. Joseph Loconte is Associate Professor of History at King’s and the author of A Hob-bit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Redis-covered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918.

“ Great friendship is a gift born of adversity: it is made possible by the common struggle against

the world’s darkness.

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The Communion

of Saints

At the King’s Briarcliff campus, we entered a unique community, and carry on its legacy.

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hirty-one years ago, I became a freshman at The King’s College. Since then, holy hordes of people touched my soul: professors who taught by word and by example, kind and generous staff, the college President who remembered my name, choir and band directors

who filled my heart and voice with sacred music that still earworms its way into my brain, classmates who struggled through music theory, literature, and philosophy classes with me, friends who listened to all my essays and loved me through awkward and funny episodes, those who still love and encourage me in person or via Facebook. Though facts I memorized are long buried, life lessons endure with those friendships, some active and others faded into warm memory.

Clearly, at King’s I received not only a degree, but entry into a unique community of saints.

It was a privilege to serve at TKC during the final four semesters at our beloved Briarcliff campus. Janet Long, ’76, then serving as Financial Aid Director, interviewed me and became a friend and mentor. During those lean years, Miller Circle became employee housing. We shared not only common space in those old dorms, but our lives. A table full of ladies from the faculty and staff met regularly over lunch for what we dubbed the “Towanda Bible Study” (a la Fried Green Tomatoes). We studied the Word and prayed. And laughed. Oh, how we could laugh, especially when a group of us girls formed an intramural basketball team to compete with the students.

Though we were devastated to be told in October 1994 that the College would be closed by semester’s end, we sensed we still had purpose. The community of students, faculty, and staff together faced a myriad of emotions: disappointment,

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“I believe in the resurrection.

I believe in a life that never ends.And I believe what I believe is

what makes me what I am. I did not make it - no, it is making me.

It is the very truth of God and not the invention

of any man.

”

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hurt, and anger, but also much joy in the struggle to make it through the rest of that semester.

Our faith was stretched and strength-ened. The admissions department, no longer needed to recruit students, took over the kitchen, and I, formerly Bursar, was invited by Athletic Director Lynn Sabia ‘85 to be her assistant, also filling in as Student Activities and Security Director, positions that had no business to be on my resume except that God uses those who are willing! The irony of me on a sports team of any kind, with an office in the gymnasium is testament to the grace and humor of the Lord.

Perkins, ’82, joined the faculty, moved into Miller, led us in worship with her guitar, and introduced me to the music of Rich Mullins and his inimitable version of The Apostles’ Creed. The last stanza of “Creed” summarizes much of my life as a Christian and as an alumna of TKC, and if I sing along, chokes me up every time:

I believe in God the Father almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth

And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, Our Lord.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, One Holy Church,

the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sin.

I believe in the resurrection. I believe in a life that never ends.

And I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am.

I did not make it - no, it is making me.

It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

Despite nearly wearing out my Rich Mullins CD, I truly pondered “the com-munion of saints” only after marrying an Episcopal priest and joining his church, when we began to earnestly discuss the words of the liturgy we recite each week. Faithful saints who went before us are an integral part of our lives now, and saints who follow us will look to our exam-ple, not only within the Church proper, but by extension through people of The King’s College. Older alumni exempli-fied Christ to me, faculty and friends helped shape my faith, and now students at our New York City campus, who are so curious about past incarnations of the college and the stories we tell, encourage my faith with their bold testimony.

What vitality there is in our King’s community of saints: alumni and student, faculty and staff past and present! Each generation of believers building on the strong foundation of faith laid in the past, Jesus Christ our cornerstone. We carry a legacy of what once was, live the faith of Christ each day and work to encourage what is now and what will be. †

Sharon lives in Goshen, New York with her husband Carl, Rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church, and enjoys singing with the church choir and hosting events at the Rectory. Sha-ron served for several years on the Alumni Executive Committee and currently works in HR for a land engineering and survey-ing company. She encourages all alumni to visit the NYC campus and see the new and exciting face of King’s.

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Photos of The King's College past and present

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THEN & NOW

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Through its commitment to the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview, The King’s College seeks to transform society by preparing students for careers in which they help to shape and eventually to lead

strategic public and private institutions, and by supporting faculty members as they directly engage culture through writing and speaking publicly on critical issues.

In the next issue:

F A I T H & W O R K