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1. Protestant chaplain at Georgetown: God told us to kick out InterVarsity and others
"Blessings and may God's peace be upon you!" begins a letter to six evangelical groups from Constance Wheeler, the Protestant chaplain at Georgetown University. The letter then explains that effective immediately, the ministries

will no longer be allowed to hold any activity or presence (i.e. Bible studies, retreats with Georgetown students, Mid-week worship services, fellowship events, move-in assistance, SAC Fair, etc.) on campus. … Additionally, all websites linking your ministries to a presence at Georgetown University will need to be modified to reflect the terminated relationship. Your ministries are not to publicize in any literature, media, advertisement, etc. that Georgetown University is or will be an active ministry site.

It's God's will, Wheeler explained. "While we realize this comes as a great disappointment, please know we are moving forward with this decision only after much dialogue with the Lord. We have enjoyed working with your ministries in various capacities over the years and will always keep your ministry in our prayers."

While the Protestant chaplain's office may have enjoyed working with the ministries, the problem, according to several sources and a university spokesman, was that the office wanted more control over them.

"With this restructuring has come a desire in the Protestant chaplaincy to build the ministry from within Georgetown and its Protestant student leaders rather than rely on outside groups or fellowships," Erik Smulson told various news sources. "Hopefully this restructuring of the chaplaincy will provide a more consistent and focused effort to work with the Protestant students to ensure that their spiritual needs are being met."

Smulson was even more direct with The Washington Post, explaining that (in the Post's paraphrase) the Protestant chaplaincy "wants more control over its on-campus ministries." "It was hard for Campus Ministry to keep track of them," he said.

Tim Ratp, an adult leader of the Crossroad Campus Christian Fellowship, told the Georgetown student newspaper, The Hoya, that administrators he met with told him that they "have no idea what we're doing, and therefore [they don't] want us on the campus."

Not that school officials haven't tried to control these groups before. First Things editor Jody Bottum writes,

There was something odd going on last year when Campus Ministries demanded that the evangelical groups sign a statement promising not to "proselytize nor undermine another faith community." And there was something even odder when it was done in the name of the school's Catholic tradition—by the Protestant chaplains in the official Georgetown office. … There's an obvious irony here—employed too often to be surprising—in which people begin by protesting in the name of diversity against centralized authority, and later discover, once they're in charge, how useful those old forms of authority can be in controlling diversity.

The "proselytizing" ban wasn't the end of it (InterVarsity leader Kevin Offner told The Washington Times that it wasn't quite a ban on all evangelism, "but I do think we need to be careful in our defining of words and terms.") According to Inside Higher Ed, group leaders also had to sign a statement "expressing respect for the Catholic faith as a legitimate path to God." The groups also had to agree to send staff members to joint Protestant religious services. And that's where there may be a problem with the chaplaincy's desire to "work with the Protestant students to ensure that their spiritual needs are being met."

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August (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50