Alan Crippen started as executive director and chaplain of the Hillsdale’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom this month.

Crippen previously served as rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Parish in Hillsdale from September 2021 until Jan. 15 of this year. In his new role at the Blake Center, Crippen said he will work with External Affairs, Institutional Advancement, and Marketing to plan and program events at the center.

The Blake Center for Faith and Freedom, located in Somers, Connecticut, is a satellite campus of Hillsdale College. The center, which the college opened in 2020, is named in honor of S. Prestley and Helen Blake, who donated the property to the college in 2019.

“New England is a place that needs the presence of the Blake Center and needs an institution like Hillsdale and the Blake Center to help recover an understanding of the relationship between faith and freedom,” Crippen said.

The 100-acre property is home to a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and according to the Blake Center’s website, hosts invite-only lectures and seminars focused on “Christianity, Western Civilization, and America,” featuring Hillsdale faculty and other speakers.

Chief Administrative Officer Rich Péwé said the center enables the college to reach more than 1 million Imprimis readers living on the East Coast through in-person instruction at the center. 

“The Blake Center is a resource for these people,” Péwé said. “Regional access and over 30,000 square feet of facilities allows the college to host a variety of in-person programs designed to educate friends of the college about the core principles of American civilization and its heritage.”

The center can hold as many as 150 people for events, and Péwé said several thousand people attend programs each year. He said the center’s most popular events are dinner-lecture programs with Hillsdale professors and other Hillsdale-affiliated lecturers.

“Hillsdale reaches its national audience both virtually and through in-person instruction,” Péwé said. “As a teaching institution, Hillsdale knows that both modes of instruction are effective, and in combination more effective. The potential exists for Hillsdale to reach and teach many more people by strategically distributing its teaching capacity.”

Crippen said the center’s location in Connecticut helps to reach friends of the college on the East Coast and further promotes the college’s mission, but the center’s distance from Hillsdale can make it difficult to stay synchronized with the main campus.

“The challenge is the opportunity to develop the center, to fully maximize its use for the purposes of the college, to support the mission and vision of the college and to do it in a remote location,” Crippen said. 

Crippen said like Hillsdale’s other remote campus, the Allan P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., the Blake Center promotes the mission and vision of the college through education.

“It’s the newest of a satellite campus. So the opportunity is to build out and to fully utilize this wonderful place for the mission,” Crippen said. “But that, of course, has many challenges — the challenges of designing and implementing programs, the challenges of operating such a large campus with economy — and this is not an inexpensive property to maintain.”

While the Kirby Center focuses on the education of students with its Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program and Van Andel Graduate School, Crippen said the Blake Center provides educational opportunities for friends of the college with its continuing education seminars. 

Crippen said the center is still evolving in its mission and programming, and will continue to do so under his leadership, but said he hopes to implement new educational programs that involve undergraduate students in addition to the friends of the college the center already hosts. 

“We want them to personally experience the Blake Center and its beauty, but also expose people in that region to the high quality of faculty that Hillsdale College has through wonderful events,” Crippen said. “It is such a beautiful place, and we want to share its beauty with the entire Hillsdale community, but also with the neighborhood.”

Crippen is a graduate of Cairn University and Westminster Theological Seminary and served in the Army Reserves on active duty, according to his Blake Center website biography. Crippen worked for the Family Research Council’s Witherspoon Fellowship for nine years and is the founder and former president of the John Jay Institute, a Christian foundation devoted to equipping students for a career in public service. He was the executive director of the American Bible Society’s Faith and Liberty Initiative, a project dedicated to presenting the bible as a foundational text of American freedom. 

“Faith, liberty, and freedom have been my entire professional career,” Crippen said.

Crippen moved to Hillsdale in 2021 and married his wife Leonor the same year, after his first wife, Michelle, died of cancer in 2020.

Crippen said during a visit to the Blake Center for a conference last summer, then-Executive Director of the Blake Center Labin Duke mentioned the center’s upcoming need for an executive director. Duke, who now serves as the vice president of National Donor Outreach for Institutional Advancement, began as the center’s first executive director in 2021.

Crippen said the other event attendees, including Bishop Julian Dobbs, diocesan bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, knew he “was the guy,” but Crippen, along with his wife, were not sold.

“Leonor and I were so attached and committed to the parish,” Crippen said. “It was hard for me to think ‘really, I mean, I have this background, and yes, this feels very comfortable and familiar to me, but where am I supposed to be?’”

But Crippen said on a 12-hour drive from Hillsdale to the Blake Center for another visit, he had time to think it over.

“I remember calling the Bishop Julian Dobbs, and I said, ‘Look, if you think I’m supposed to be there, I’ll pray about it, but I’m not going to apply for this job because a lot of other people need to convince me that God wants me out there,’” Crippen said.

Crippen announced his new position with the center in December and served his final Sunday with Holy Trinity Jan. 15.

Crippen’s move to the Blake Center leaves Holy Trinity Parish in Hillsdale tasked with finding a new rector.

Hillsdale College Chaplain Rev. Adam Rick said he held the role as pastor of Holy Trinity for six years before Crippen began as rector in 2021. Rick said during Crippen’s tenure at Holy Trinity, he occasionally served the church by preaching or serving as celebrant when needed. With Crippen’s move, Rick said he will serve the church in those ways more frequently but he will not play a role in searching for a new pastor.

“My hope is that the church finds, above all, a man who loves Jesus and will minister the gospel with clarity and boldness,” Rick said. “I have every confidence in Bishop Dobbs and the congregation’s vestry that they can discern, in the Spirit, who God is already preparing to bring to us.”

Executive Director of Online Learning Jeremiah Regan is the chair of Holy Trinity’s lay board and will assist with the church’s search for a new pastor.

“Holy Trinity will follow diocesan policy and trust in God’s providence during our rector search,” Regan said.

Crippen said he and his wife moved to Connecticut last week.

“God was in this and he had a reassignment for me at the Blake Center, so I’m quite humbled about it,” Crippen said. “We’re ready to follow the call of God and the call of the college to help advance the work of the Blake Center for Faith and Freedom.”