The evangelist from Florida wants to pick up where the Puritans left off in New England.
Tommy Zito, an itinerant preacher who spends most of the year traveling abroad, has reportedly struck a deal with whiskey guru Raj Bhakta, who told CBN News in March that he wanted to give away his $200 million college campus in Poultney, Vermont.
The founder of Whistle Pig Whiskey had only one catch to his eyebrow-raising offer. The recipients of the vast campus, formerly the Methodist Green Mountain College, needed to be Christians who shared Bhakta’s view that Biblical principles were essential to America’s prosperity.
“When we forget that we have a God above us who gives us rules, we don’t make them. That forgetting is what has created this crazy culture of despair, selfishness, and crazy ideas,” he said.
Zito wants to transform the 26-building campus into a “Christ-centered university,” with dormitories, classrooms, athletic facilities and more than 100 acres of farmland, and plans to name it “Z University,” according to the New York Post.
The Pentecostal preacher shared the following video promoting his burgeoning project.
Zito plans the Vermont campus to be the first in a line of faith-based education locations that will add campuses in Canada, Italy, Dubai, Poland and Sri Lanka. He told the Post that he hopes to eventually add schools in Japan, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
“Let’s just say that Vermont and New England are not pro-church. We want them to know that we’re here to serve,” Zito said of locals in Poultney, a town of about 3,000 people, according to 2020 census data. “Having a Christian university occupy this beautiful campus probably wasn’t our first choice.”
As for Bhakta, he bought 115 acres of land at auction for $4.5 million in 2020 after Methodist School closed the previous year.
The whiskey mogul had originally planned to let the property go, but Mr. Zito said he “bought it at a fair price,” while Mr. Bhakta said he had offered him a “fair” deal. Mr. Zito and Mr. Bhakta have agreed not to disclose the purchase price at this time.
“This was a historic university, and all we’re doing is reclaiming it and revitalizing it to its roots,” Zito said of plans for the campus. “Ultimately, I truly believe it will be a blessing to Poultney and to the region.”
He called the proposed university an “economic boon” and said it would “reinvigorate — and it’s not like there isn’t some revitalization there right now, but…certainly some of the areas around it could see some revitalization,” noting that the school would provide an education based on a “Christ-centered, Biblical worldview.”
Ultimately, he hopes U of Z will function as a liberal arts college, offering training in evangelism, leadership, business, government, communications, and digital media “with an emphasis on the digital side with AI.”
The minister said he plans to bring tuition in line with other Christian universities, such as Grand Canyon University, which has a base tuition of $16,500 a year.
“I’m not doing anything to make money off of it,” he told the Post. “We’re going to make it as affordable as possible. And it depends on the donor base, the donations and everything else.”
Asked earlier this year how he would define Vermont real estate success, Bhakta told CBN News that “resurrection” is the goal.
“If we can plant a flag in this place and bring light, understanding that we orient ourselves around God, family and country, we can find purpose and bring light. This was, in fact, the motto of this campus when it began as a Methodist school more than 200 years ago,” he said.
The slogan Bhakta was referring to is Green Mountain College’s motto, “Lux Fiat,” which in English means “Let There Be Light.”
Introducing faith-based education to New England is not a new idea, despite the culture’s disintegration of Christianity.
Prior to the founding of the United States, Puritan colonists in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Colony of Connecticut founded Harvard University in 1636 and Yale University in 1701, respectively, to educate the next generation of religious leaders in their regions.
If it were to become a reality, Z University would mark the resurgence of religious education in Upper New England.
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