This is newsworthy on a number of levels but mainly for reasons which will be clear to anyone who has ever lived in New England. Vermont is a very liberal state. In fact, Vermont makes Massachusetts look like Alabama.

Libby A. Nelson of Inside Higher Ed reports.

There can be few less likely locations for a new Baptist college than a former hotel and conference center in Bennington, Vt., in the southwest corner of one of the nation’s least religious states, where Baptists of any stripe make up a tiny fraction of the population.

Still, it’s in Bennington, on the third and fourth story of a former Ramada Inn and Conference Center, that Northeastern Baptist College is planning to open its doors next fall. It hopes to do so with 100 students, a clear pathway to regional accreditation, and $7 million in the bank.

Those goals would be ambitious for any new college. The difficulty is compounded by the obstacle of Vermont’s, and New England’s, religious culture: in rankings of states’ residents’ churchgoing habits or frequency of prayer or belief in God, Vermont always is near the end, if not dead last. In early 2011, the Gallup organization named it the least religious state in the country.

That, says Mark Ballard, the college’s president, is why Northeastern Baptist hopes to open there — to enroll students like he once was himself, interested in studying the Bible at an accredited college without straying far from home.