Dondi E. Costin is the new president of Liberty University

As Kate Shellnut reports at Christianity Today, Liberty University has finally replaced Jerry Falwell Jr. on a permanent basis. Dondi Custin is a retired Air Force chaplain. Here is a taste of Kate’s reporting:

Two and a half years after Jerry Falwell Jr. stepped down in scandal, Liberty University named its new president on Friday: Dondi E. Costin, the outgoing president at Charleston Southern University and a retired US Air Force major general and chaplain who earned a pair of master’s degrees from Liberty.

Costin is the school’s first president to not be named Jerry, succeeding interim president and longtime board chair Jerry Prevo and the two Jerry Falwells before him. Liberty’s founding family is still represented in leadership; pastor Jonathan Falwell—son of the late Jerry Falwell Sr. and brother to Jerry Falwell Jr.—has been appointed chancellor.

Costin, an Air Force Academy graduate who concluded a 32-year military career as chief of chaplains at the Pentagon, spent the past five years leading Charleston Southern, a Christian college of around 3,500 students in South Carolina.

“There are fewer differences than one might imagine between the processes and procedure of the military and higher education,” Costin told CT’s Creative Studio in 2019. “If you can survive and thrive in a complex bureaucracy like the Pentagon, then you can do it in a complex bureaucracy like higher education.”

Read the rest here.

Costin has a Ph.D. in “leadership” and a Doctor of Ministry in “church growth” from Al Mohler’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also holds an M.A. in religion from Liberty University Baptist Theological Seminary and an M.A. in counseling from Liberty University. From 2015-2018 he was the Chief of Chaplains for the United States Air Force and appears to have had a distinguished military career.

He also appears to enjoy National Hammock Day:

He appears to think masks are important:

He approves this message:

He like Chik-fil-A:

Al Mohler is his buddy:

So is South Carolina Senator Tim Scott:

I wonder what he thought about Barry Black’s recent comments about gun violence:

Here is the Liberty University press release. I am sure we will have more to say about this appointment in the near future.

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