God And The City

Sex and the City

The King's was founded in 1938 in Belmar, N.J., and moved to Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in 1955. A failed land deal closed the place in 1994, and it had some touch-and-go moments after it was reborn in the Empire State Building. There were just 17 students in the first class.

Three years ago, the state's Board of Regents seemed poised to vote against renewing the King's accreditation -- which would have all but turned off the lights -- arguing that the school didn't have the budget or faculty to teach more than 200 students. The King's supporters mounted a public relations campaign, in Christian radio and publications, suggesting that the board had an anti-Christian bias. Ultimately, the Regents handed over their seal of approval and the second existential threat to the college was thwarted.

All of the King's students are assigned to "houses" with names like Thatcher, Reagan and Churchill. Throughout the year, they compete -- in scavenger hunts, in basketball games, in a race for the highest GPA, in good works.

An academic year at the King's costs $29,000, though nearly all the students get some form of financial aid or scholarships from a variety of private donors and foundations. The fee includes housing, which the King's rents in two high-rise buildings, one for men, another a few blocks away for women, both on Sixth Avenue near the Empire State Building. Each apartment is a one-bedroom for four people; the bedroom has two sets of bunk beds. Dating is permitted. There are no rules against sex, but it's quietly discouraged, by students as well as faculty.

Sex, however, is a topic that Manhattan has a way of bringing up, regardless of your views on the matter. After the Saturday night debate, a group of a dozen students heads to a Vietnamese restaurant, and over bowls of lemon-grass soup the women trade stories.

"We were walking downtown once and this guy came up to my friend Katherine and pointed to her butt," says Penelope Gelwicks, a sophomore from Fishers, Ind. "He said, 'You know what we call that in Brooklyn? A badonkadonk!' He followed us for a little while, then he said, 'Okay, bye!' "

As unnerving as these tales might sound, lots of these students intend to stay in New York when they graduate, landing jobs in nonreligious fields with nonreligious corporations. No one has become smitten enough with life in the "muck and mire" to ditch Christianity for the dark side, as far as the students and administrators know. But a few of these youngsters seem well on their way to melding the evangelical mind-set and New York City style.

Deborah Francisco, for instance, has mastered the Gotham approach to human interaction: Keep your head down and brace yourself for unpleasantness. It's to the point now that, on a recent trip to Georgia, she suffered what she called "reverse culture shock."

"This girl came up to me and said, 'Oh, I love your sweater; where'd you get it?' " Francisco says, laying on the sort of sweet Southern drawl you hear at beauty pageants. "I was like, 'Gosh, I don't know what to say.' I had actually forgotten how to be friendly."