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Job Location: NORTH CHARLESTON, SC 29406

Position Type: Full Time

Charleston Southern University seeks a founding executive director for a permanent university-based Center for Christian Apologetics and Civil Engagement. The executive director will be a Baptist scholar and public intellectual who can build a high-impact, academically serious, student-forming, faculty-engaging, and publicly visible apologetics center.

The center will utilize traditional Christian apologetics while also promoting civil discourse and constructive engagement with the major academic fields of the university. Rather than functioning only as a lecture series or public platform, the center will also help faculty and students develop and deploy apologetic arguments for Christianity from the intellectual, moral, cultural, and social goods that emerge when Christians bring the faith to bear faithfully within their disciplines.

• Provide strategic, academic, and public leadership for the Center for Christian Apologetics and Civil Engagement.
• Develop and implement the center’s mission, programs, annual priorities, and long-term strategy.
• Build student-facing programs that form students in Christian apologetics, civil discourse, intellectual confidence, and faithful public witness.
• Engage faculty across the university in developing apologetic arguments and resources related to their academic disciplines.
• Create and oversee public programming, including lectures, forums, workshops, visiting scholar events, and church-facing apologetics events.
• Produce or coordinate durable intellectual resources, including essays, lectures, videos, podcasts, curriculum materials, white papers, edited volumes, and other apologetics resources.
• Represent the university publicly through speaking, writing, media engagement, conference participation, and relationships with churches, pastors, denominational leaders, and apologetics organizations.
• Support university advancement efforts related to the center by communicating the center’s vision, impact, and strategic importance to donors and external partners.
• The executive director will hold a faculty appointment in the College of Christian Studies at an appropriate rank based on academic qualifications and experience and will teach one course per major semester in an area related to apologetics, theology, philosophy, public theology, faith and culture, or another field connected to the center’s mission.
• Work warmly and constructively with evangelicals of multiple denominational traditions in a confessional Baptist university context, support the mission of the institution, and engage students, faculty, churches, pastors, donors, and the broader public with theological clarity and Christian charity.
• Perform other duties as required.

• A strong commitment to Christian Higher Education and Charleston Southern University’s mission.
• PhD in a field directly related to the work of the center, such as Christian apologetics, ethics, historical theology, New Testament or early Christianity, philosophy, philosophy of religion, public theology, theology, or a closely related field.
• Affirmation of the university doctrinal statement as well as the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
• A publication record demonstrating influence in areas such as apologetics, public theology, and civil engagement.
• Record of scholarly credibility, public communication, and evangelical leadership; recognizable standing beyond the local university context through publications, speaking, podcasting, video content, denominational leadership, academic networks, or apologetics ministry.

• Demonstrated success in strategic planning and program development.
• Record of successful external engagement and partnership development.
• Five or more years serving in a Christian higher education setting.

• Servant leadership philosophy marked by genuine Christlikeness.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build trust across stakeholders.
• Collaborative mindset that values interdisciplinary engagement.
• Strategic thinking balanced with operational effectiveness.
• Commitment to advancing the mission and growth of the Center for Christian Apologetics and Civil Engagement.