Two Anniversaries, One Calling
A Commemorative Presidential Address on the 85th Anniversary of Cornerstone University and the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America
Eighty-five years ago, a small group of Christians gathered in Grand Rapids with a conviction that would seem almost countercultural today: that the best education begins with God, is characterized by Truth and is grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and is oriented toward the transformation of individuals, communities, our nation, and the world.
They did not think of themselves as founders. But they were.
This year, as America marks 250 years since her own Founding — since a generation of extraordinary men set their names to words they were not yet sure they could live up to — we find ourselves at the intersection of two anniversaries that are more than coincidental. They are, I believe, providential.
Because the questions that animated America’s Founders are the same questions that animate us. What does it mean to be free? What obligations do we carry to one another — and to those who come after us? What kind of citizens does a self-governing republic require? And who will form these citizens?
The men who signed the Declaration and hammered out the Constitution did not answer these questions casually. They answered them at great cost, with hard-won wisdom, drawing on centuries of philosophy, theology, and experience with human nature. The founders of Cornerstone asked the same questions — and answered them with equal seriousness, grounding their answers not merely in political tradition but in the eternal truth of Scripture.
Those answers have not expired. They demand from us not nostalgia, but careful re-engagement — the kind of thinking that neither takes inherited wisdom for granted nor discards it for the fashions of the moment. Every generation must receive these truths as if for the first time, testing the challenges of their own age against them. And finding, as every faithful generation has found, that these truths hold.
That is the work of education. And it has never been more urgent.
We live in a moment when universities have largely abandoned God and the formation of citizens — when students earn credentials but do not learn how to sustain their own nation.
Cornerstone University exists to be a different kind of institution.
Our students are formed by the preeminence of Christ, shaped by a serious Christian worldview, engaged with the wisdom and the story of America, and prepared with the market intelligence to go into the world as influencers for Jesus Christ. We are not nostalgic. We are not naïve. But we believe that a nation whose universities fail to transmit Truth to future generations will not long endure.
So today we celebrate — not because we have arrived, but because we have endured. Because 85 years of Christian education and 250 years of American self-governance are gifts that demand stewardship, not just celebration.
The Founders of our nation pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. The founders of Cornerstone pledged something quieter but no less costly: their faithfulness.
We are the heirs of both. May we be worthy of them.
Gerson Moreno-Riaño, Ph.D.
President
Cornerstone University
