ALBANY – Officials at a Christian liberal arts college that moved to Manhattan after a series of financial setbacks at a Westchester County location say their school’s future is again in jeopardy because of trivial concerns from the state Board of Regents over its curriculum and identity.

The King’s College, established at Briarcliff Manor in 1955, moved to the lower level of the Empire State Building in 1999 after receiving a cash infusion from an evangelical group, Campus Crusade for Christ International. The school had closed in the 1990s after going millions of dollars into debt.

At the Manhattan location, the college – with 28 full- and part-time faculty members and 264 mostly full-time students – offers degrees in management and education in addition to a special degree in politics, philosophy, and economics, which is based on a traditional course of studies at Oxford University in England.

School officials said they were on a smooth path toward reaccredidation earlier this year when one member of the Board of Regents, who was once a Rhodes scholar, began raising questions about the school’s ability to deliver on its promise of an Oxford-style degree.

They said the regent, John Brademas, the former Indiana congressman and a past president of New York University, also inquired into the legitimacy of the school’s name and the nature of its relationship with Campus Crusade for Christ. Accreditation involves the evaluation of a school’s curriculum, faculty, and finances, as a way of vouching for its ability to provide the education it advertises.

According to The King’s College officials, the Campus Crusade is the school’s “parent organization.” A college spokesman also said Mr. Brademas “wanted to know whether Columbia University surrendered their rights to use the name,” but countered that though the older school was chartered in 1754 as King’s College by King George II, it has been known as Columbia College or Columbia College in the City of New York for more than 200 years.

“The King’s College in our name refers to the king of kings, Jesus Christ, and not the former king of England,” a press release quoted the Midtown school’s president, J. Stanley Oakes, as saying. “Our king reigns forever.”

Calling Mr. Brademas’s questions “groundless and trivial,” Mr. Oakes said the reason the school’s application was denied appeared to be “a bias against our identity.”

According to Mr. Oakes, school officials spent months last year preparing for a review by the Board of Regents in January. The review process is largely conducted ahead of time by an advisory council composed of Department of Education staff. The council made a unanimous recommendation to approve the school for five years, but a committee of regents that included Mr. Brademas rejected that advice in its own recommendation to the full board in January.

Earlier this month, the full board agreed to grant the school one year of accreditation based, Mr. Oakes said, on the concerns of Mr. Brademas, who did not return calls seeking comment. A spokesman for the Board of Regents, Jonathan Burman, said a one-year extension is not equivalent to probation. He also said the board was unanimous in its desire for more information on programs, faculty, and resources.

Mr. Burman did not provide specific details on the new questions that would be asked, saying the school had a right to see them first. He referred to the charges against Mr. Brademas as “hearsay.” A spokesman for The King’s College, Michael Paul, said school officials have not yet seen the list of questions.

Seven schools in the state were up for accreditation last year. The Board of Regents approved six, denying an extension to Gamla College, a two-year vocational school in Brooklyn. The board granted probationary two-year accreditation to Interboro Institute, a professional college in Manhattan, in 2002.

That school has since been fully accredited.

Another regent who sits on the subcommittee that advises the full board on accreditation, Harry Phillips, said the recommendations of the Department of Education are ordinarily adopted by his group, the committee on Higher Education and Professions. Mr. Phillips said the council’s advice was rejected this time because of a difference of opinion.

“I guess some people had reservations and said ‘let’s not go too fast on this,’ ” he said. “The reasons were questions as to whether the school could in fact, with the faculty they have, provide all the services, the degrees, and so on, they are offering. We didn’t say they couldn’t. We said we’d like to see how they do in the next year.”

“I assure you it was not Brademas having a feeling against religion or because it was a Christian college,” Mr. Phillips said.

Officials with The King’s College said they have provided the board with all the answers it needs to make an evaluation. They characterized the one-year extension as a death sentence.

“When you have a new class of students obviously they want to know the school is going to be open for another four years,” Mr. Paul said. “It’s a huge reputational hit. It’s a huge fund-raising hit. It’s basically locking you up to get more materials. It’s a nightmare.”

A professor at Boston College who teaches philosophy part-time at The King’s College, Peter Kreeft, said he has been favorably impressed by the school.

“I teach there because I love it,” Mr. Kreeft, the author of more than 40 books, said.

“The enthusiasm of the students is really contagious, and the progress I’ve seen in even the slowest students is quite remarkable. The place is not narrow. It’s not party-line fundamentalist or anything like that,” he added.

Mr. Oakes said the school is currently appealing the decision of the Board of Regents, but he questioned the sense of such a move since, he noted, appeals are made to the board itself.