One evangelist from Florida is hoping to pick up where the Puritans left off in New England.
Tommie Zito, an itinerant preacher who spends much of the year traveling internationally, has reportedly inked a deal with whiskey maven Raj Bhakta, who told CBN News in March he wanted to give away a $200 million college campus in Poultney, Vermont.
The founder of WhistlePig Whiskey had only one catch for his eyebrow-raising offer: the recipient of the sprawling campus — former home to the Methodist-affiliated Green Mountain College — needed to be a Christian who shared Bhakta’s view that biblical principles are vital to America’s flourishing.
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“When we forget that there is a God above us who gives us the rules, we don’t make them — forgetting that is what has caused this crazy culture to emerge of hopelessness, and selfishness, and crazy ideas,” he said.
Zito hopes to turn the campus, a 26-building property with dorms, classrooms, athletic facilities, and more than 100 acres of farmland, into a “Christ-centered university” he’s planning to name “Z University,” according to the New York Post.
The Pentecostal preacher shared this video promoting the burgeoning project:
Zito plans for the Vermont campus to be the first of many faith-based educational hubs with additional campuses in Canada, Italy, Dubai, Poland, and Sri Lanka. Ultimately, he told the Post, he wants to add schools in Japan, Ireland, and the U.K., too.
“I’m sure it probably wasn’t their first choice to have a Christian university take over this beautiful campus,” Zito said of the local residents in Poultney, a town of roughly 3,000 people, according to census data from 2020. “Vermont and New England are not pro-church, let’s just say. We want them to know that I’m coming in here — we’re coming in here — to serve.”
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