Earlier this week, Hunter Baker was the Evangel messenger to announce that Ken Starr will become the next president at Baylor University. Permit me to announce that Philip Graham Ryken will become the eighth president at Wheaton College. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees wrote: “The unanimous vote reflects our deep confidence in Dr. Ryken’s ability to articulate and exemplify the College’s mission, and our conviction that he will provide strong academic and Christ-centered leadership for this new chapter in the life of Wheaton College, as well as in the academy at large.”
I share this “deep confidence.” Dr. Ryken continues the pastor-scholar model of leadership, which promises to guide the College in matters of the heart and the head. As the senior minister at the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Dr. Ryken will uphold evangelical heritage of the College. As a worldwide speaker and teacher, he will preach what philosopher Carl Raschke calls “the joyful inevitability of the coming GloboChrist.”
When I reflected on the eve of the next presidency, I claimed that what matters for the future of Evangelicalism matters for the future of the College: what are we doing to hasten the eschaton? Dr. Ryken has the intellectual and spiritual fitness to equip the heirs of Jonathan Blanchard in this vital task.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
