Free Speech Violation

This is a free speech issue, for sure. Does the university receive any tax dollars to run it? If so, those funds can be withheld by the government.

Craig C, political pundit at http://blogresponder.blogspot.com, at 7:15 am EDT on August 28, 2006

Administration

I am a Catholic Christian and an alumna of Georgetown University. As a Roman Catholic, would I be allowed to practice my faith and preach it to other students if I were a student at an Evangelical Christian college? Having lived in the South for 23 years in areas where Cathoics are rare, and having acquaintances who are members of evangelical churches, I seriously doubt that I would be accorded anywhere near the latitude to practice my faith in one of the Evangelical Christian colleges that Georgetown gives its students, faculty and wider university community.

Louise Mathews, Ms. at carteret community college, at 9:10 am EDT on August 28, 2006

probably not a first amendment issue

Craig, Just because an institution receives a dollar from the government (as Georgetown does) does not mean that it is bound to follow the constitution in the same way that the government does. There are exceptions to this (such as when an entity owns an entire town, or when the government action effectively stifles some expression) but, quite frankly, this isn’t present here. Georgetown, while big, doesn’t take up all of DC, and evangelicals have plenty of opportunity to do their thing.

As Arthur Idle Suggests, Georgetown isn’t a “public forum.” I generally agree, but I am sure that they have thought through the issue of whether streets that are owned by Georgetown might somehow be considered public forums or not. (See, this is why it is neat to be a lawyer. You get to look at maps of sidewalks.)

Louise, Most likely, at an evangelical college you would be allowed to attend mass and do things Catholics do.

JRRocker, While you may like to describe it as a free speech issue, as I stated above, it is only as much of an issue as Georgetown desires it to be. Georgetown could prohibit all proselytizing and not run afoul of the First amendment (except within the two exceptions noted above.)

Larry, at 10:25 am EDT on August 28, 2006

They’re not CAMPUS groups

The key here, it seems to me, if I’m reading these stories correctly, is that these are not campus groups that are being banned; they are external groups. Georgetown-student-organized groups of all faiths and their activities remain unaffected.

And, if that’s true, as long as such a standard is applied across the board, I think it’s fair and utterly defensible.

GG, at 10:25 am EDT on August 28, 2006

Extremism?

“It is time tht these extremist evangelicals go — to their own clime and time and leave when they do not feel comfortable around others more tolerant.”

What acts of extremism did these student groups commit? Without facts justifying such an aggressive allegation, the above statement is jarringly ironic.

JBM, at 10:35 am EDT on August 28, 2006

Students, Flavors, and Religion in the US

In the arguments (from both sides) about free speech, coerced conformity, controlling the message, unifying the protestants, and everything else, I’m not hearing a lot about the college kids. The fact of the matter is that Georgetown has kids from lots of different backgrounds. They do an admirable job of providing spiritual support for several of those backgrounds. However, anyone who knows anything about protestantism knows that there are more flavors than you can shake a stick out. To simply dictate that “for administrative purposes” there will be one approved flavor of protestant worship and ministry on campus (if that’s what is actually happening) strikes me as a bit uninformed about the sociological realities of religion in the United States. This doesn’t strike me as a genuine ideological war zone here; in my opinion it smells more like a bureaucratic turf battle to pump up weak attendance at the official campus events. If true, that’s just sad.

KH, at 10:50 am EDT on August 28, 2006

“In a letter to the evangelical groups, Rev. Constance C. Wheeler, the Protestant chaplain at Georgetown, did not offer any reason for the decision, but said that it came “only after much dialogue with the Lord.” “

I’d be really interested in asking Rev. Wheeler what the Lord said and the way He said it.

chris b, Who speaks for God?, at 11:25 am EDT on August 28, 2006

RGathro

You have completely misread my post. I am contesting any blanket allegation that evangelical Christians are extremists per se. I am asking what grounds in fact support any accusation that the student groups in question are extremist in nature or deed. It is disappointing, to say the least, to see myself charged with making the very allegations that I am clearly contesting in my post.

JBM, at 12:05 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

It’s my impression that the groups have not been banned from campus. Just like a Catholic organization at an evangelical institution, they are to be tolerated but not promoted by the university.....

catholic mom, at 1:15 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

JBM is correct

I misread JBM. I apologize. That’s what I get for reading too quickly.

RGathro, at 2:25 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

CZL, I am deeply sorry that you have been subjected to such painful experiences. It was deeply wrong, and should not have happened.

You stated, “The article does not make it clear if this type of behavior, either overtly or covertly, was occuring in these groups on the Georgetown campus, but I strongly suspec that this is the root of the situation.” I would like to address that.

First, this decision was primarily made by Protestant campus ministries, not Catholic authorities on campus. At this moment, we on leadership are hoping that other authorities in the university will reverse, rather than support, this decision, though there has been little to indicate that will happen.

More importantly, as I said before, Georgetown’s undergrad InterVarsity chapter is Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. This integration takes place on leadership as well. Three of the five planned Bible studies for this year will be led by Catholic students. Several members of IV have, at one point or another, being on the leadership of the Catholic Students Association on campus. Two of the IV students who graduated last year recently converted from Protestant denominations to Catholicism. We have worked to incorporate the Catholic heritage into our teaching and worship. I believe we have consistently had an excellent relationship between the two traditions.

L Greig, you asked me, “This may be your goal, but is it what you accomplish? You may help students grow in love for God, but you also plant the seeds of a hatred against others.”

I certainly do not think we do this. In fact, I am quite sure we do not. In this current situation, we have had support from students in all manner of campus groups, including H*ya’s for Choice, GU Pride, and the Jewish chaplaincy. Would this have been the case if we were planting seeds of hatred?

InterVarsity has never made enemies on this campus. We are known, respected, and liked. The people who make up InterVarsity are involved throughout campus, not huddling in an evangelical clump. At the moment, I’m living with one other student on IV leadership and two atheists.

Does this truly sound to you as if we were a hateful group?

Stephanie Brown, at 2:25 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

Why?

“The article does not make it clear if this type of behavior, either overtly or covertly, was occuring in these groups on the Georgetown campus, but I strongly suspec that this is the root of the situation.”

Why? Absent any facts to support accusations of wrongdoing, this suspicion is irrational and improper. Let’s set prejudice aside and deal with facts, please.

JBM, at 2:25 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

Imagine what the reaction would be if Georgetown consolidated all the minority groups and commented, “well all the colored people are pretty much all the same".

I think the reaction would be somewhat different.

Pete, at 2:25 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

Past is Prologue

As the former student head of the Protestant Ministry at Georgetown, and a proud member of Intervarsity, one of the groups removed from campus, I am deeply saddened by this action taken by the University. It was a combination of the Protestant Ministry AND the other student groups that not only helped me get through school and some tough times in my life, they also lead me to where I am today, a United Methodist pastor in Oklahoma.

I should also say that it was at Georgetown that I truly gained an appreciation for Catholicism and its rich gifts. I learned much in my time there about the Catholic practice of faith, something I have shared with my friends and family since that time.

Sadly, however, none of this is surprising given what happened when I attended the school. Rev. Wheeler was hired after the University fired ("chose not to renew") the contracts of the two full-time protestant ministers serving at the time. Rev. Wheeler and two other pastors were brought in to “better reflect the diversity of Protestantism” (or something to that extent)—exactly the opposite of what they are wanting now, apparently. That decision in 1999 was met with massive student protests, a protest mass celebrated on campus, and an 11-day 24-hour prayer vigil on the front steps of the administration building (during finals). Sadly, the administration did not seem to hear then, nor do they seem to hear now, the voices of students.

That is why, since my graduation, I have given no money to Georgetown University (nor will I as long as they continue to show their ignorance of the issues that face students, especially Protestant students). I am a proud alumnus but I do not trust the administration to properly use my funds for the advancement of student interests...especially as it pertains to Protestant Ministry. I have, however, given to my friends in Intervarsity who continue to this day to offer excellent (and, I might add, non-confrontational and ecumenical) leadership in faith.

I am deeply saddened to read Rev. Wheeler’s words and know that the Lord never chooses division over unity among the body. I pray that she and the university reconsider this decision and welcome these excellent ministries back to campus.

Peace, Rev. Jeff Jaynes Southern Hills UMC, Tulsa, OKChair, Georgetown Protestant Ministry (1996-2000)

Jeff Jaynes, Past is Prologue, at 5:30 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

As a Jewish alumnus of Georgetown, I .... have almost no opinion on this.

Nobody’s freedom of religion, assembly or speech is being threatened. The University is reorganizing its student services to serve its key constituencies as well as possible as they see fit (and, probably to reduce liability issues attendant with outside groups using the university name, a very common change among university student organization regulations), and some people are disappointed, but they will find other ways to meet their religious and social needs.

Jonathan Dresner, at 7:15 pm EDT on August 28, 2006

Evangelical Openness to Catholics

The comments about evangelical intolerance ignore the great diversity among evangelicals. Some evangelical organizations (including the banished InterVarsity) have initiated Catholic-evangelical dialogue in recent years. See the papers from InterVarsity’s task force on Catholicism (which include contributions from Catholic philosopher Bill Shea) athttp://regions.ivcf.org/cathmin

Also, the Baptist Baylor University is host to the Institute for Faith and Learning which recently carried this pro-Catholic column from Director Douglas Henry:

A journalist recently contacted me to express interest in Baylor’s efforts to support a thriving Christian intellectual community. As a Baptist, he wondered about the proper role for Baptist particularity in that community, along with the breadth and kind of engagement that should be sought with other Christian traditions. “What can Baptists learn from other Christian denominations?” he asked.

He especially wondered what, if anything, Baptists could learn from Roman Catholics, long regarded as “the very antipodes of each other,” in George W. Truett’s estimation. Truett minced no words: the “Catholic conception of the church, thrusting all its complex and cumbrous machinery between the soul and God, prescribing beliefs, claiming to exercise the power of the keys, and to control the channels of grace—all such lording it over the consciences of men is to the Baptist mind a ghastly tyranny in the realm of the soul and tends to frustrate the grace of God, to destroy freedom of conscience, and to hinder terribly the coming of the Kingdom of God.” So put, the prospects for rapprochement between Baptists and Catholics would seem grim.

Yet much has transpired in the 85 years since Truett placed Baptists and Catholics in diametrically opposed corners. Once resented immigrant populations of Catholics now lay largely uncontroversial claim to citizenship alongside Protestant sons and daughters of the American Revolution. John XXIII’s leadership in convening the second Vatican Council resulted in a series of articulate documents communicating the relevance and meaningfulness of Catholic faith and practice in the modern world, and it prompted renewed efforts at ecumenical dialogue.

Meanwhile, Baptists, long dominant in the southern United States, have lost the cultural hegemony once ours and have forged cooperative partnerships with others in order to bear Christian witness in an increasingly pluralistic milieu. Christians of all sorts find themselves facing the manifold challenges of thinking and living faithfully in an increasingly post-Christian civilization. Truett’s dichotomous representation of Baptist and Catholics—with all other Christians somewhere more or less short of Baptists’ full-orbed Christian faithfulness—seems less sustainable in an age when we need to stand together if we are to stand at all.

In light of these developments, then, perhaps it is unsurprising to see such recent books published as Mark Noll’s Is the Reformation Over? and Steven Harmon’s Towards Baptist Catholicity, or to witness a series of ongoing dialogues between the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Baptist World Alliance.

Baylor has never been as sectarian as Truett’s words might have it. Proudly and persistently Baptist, the first faculty member ever hired by the university was nonetheless Episcopalian. Nearly half of the faculty, 160 years later, is Baptist, but Catholics followed by Methodists come next in line, at around 10 percent each of the total faculty. To their numbers are added dozens of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and others.

Indeed, as in no other time, it makes sense to ask: What can Baptists learn from Catholics? (Or Lutherans from Mennonites? or Nazarenes from Presbyterians?) How should Baptists read and critically engage the pastoral and theological documents of other Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism? To what ends? With what constraints? At least four reasons make raising such questions important.

“If Christian intellectual life is to prosper in the third millennium, if faith and learning are to be fruitfully related as they ought—at Baylor or anywhere—then I am persuaded that we must pray, with Jesus and the church universal, ut omnes unum sint, that they all—Christians everywhere—may be one.”

First, we Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, and all the rest need one another more than ever. Instead of looking askance at other Christians, regarding them as competitors, or isolating ourselves from them, we need to listen and learn from one another. This is no less than Jesus asked us, his followers, to do, and it is vital work if we take his prayer in John 17 seriously.

Second, Baptists, as part of the radical Reformation, are by definition dissenters, protesters, and nonconformists—inescapably marked by 1,500 years of Roman Catholic doctrine, history, and practice, and yet unwilling to embrace Catholic ways uncritically. Two things follow: (a) much of what Baptists believe grows out of the root stock of Catholicism (e.g., belief in the fully human/fully divine nature of Jesus, commitment to the Triune nature of God, acceptance of (most of) the Scriptures canonized by the Church, etc.), and (b) it is impossible to know from what in the tradition we Baptists on principle prescind unless we critically understand that tradition. To be a Baptist is to follow Christ faithfully in dissent from certain features of Roman Catholicism, while at the same time yearning always for the completion of reformation, so that all of Christ’s followers may serve and worship together.

Third, Baptist universities have a great deal to learn from Catholic universities. Baptist intellectual life is a relatively late development in the Christian history; it is preceded by centuries of thoughtful Catholic reflection on the relation between the life of the mind and the life of faith. If Baptists want to think sensitively about the grace-filled beauty of creative and artistic expression, or the possibilities and limits of faithful citizenship, or the relation between faith and reason or nature and grace, or the ways in which human language is and is not capable of describing God, or the basis for human confidence in science as a means of understanding the world—all of these and so many other issues have a long history of thoughtful and articulate treatment within the Catholic tradition.

Fourth, to undertake meaningful dialogue with other Christians, to seek better to understand the Catholic tradition out of which Baptist heritage grows as a dissenting expression of Christianity, and to try to learn how to think intelligently as a Christian by looking for help from Catholics—in none of these efforts is one required to abandon Baptist identity and conviction. Such non-negotiable expressions of faithful discipleship as believers’ baptism, commitment to the supremacy of Scripture as Christians’ guide to faith and practice, the priesthood of all believers (along with the grave responsibilities to one another that such priesthood signals), etc. ground commitment to the Baptist way. To pay attention to the breadth of Christian history, reflection, and practice hardly makes one less Baptist, but rather for the reasons outlined above promises to help realize the fullness of Baptist identity, precisely through the aforementioned distinctives.

If Christian intellectual life is to prosper in the third millennium, if faith and learning are to be fruitfully related as they ought—at Baylor or anywhere—then I am persuaded that we must pray, with Jesus and the church universal, ut omnes unum sint, that they all—Christians everywhere—may be one. Within the vast treasures of Christian faith, practice, learnedness and integrity through the centuries lie the resources to render Christian intellectual community true reality instead of passing fancy.

JS, at 11:20 am EDT on August 29, 2006

Who hates who?

It appears that after reading all of the above that the people that hate others or dislike others are not those of the groups being asked to leave. A lot of you have made up your mind on this topic without really knowing all of the facts. Why don’t you all look up one of the groups being askes to leave and see what they are all about.

Also, as far as I know, anyone can attend IV. There are restrictions on those in leadership roles though.

TC, at 1:45 pm EDT on August 29, 2006

Georgetown owes its students, evangelical and otherwise, better than Rev. Wheeler.

Why? There are three major branches of Judaism, but only one Rabbi. Should Jewish students be up in arms, too?

Jonathan Dresner, at 2:20 pm EDT on August 30, 2006

JD: I meant “better” as in Georgetown deserves better than an administrator who is purging her campus of religious organizations and claiming to meet the spiritual needs of all of them.

A Reform chaplain/rabbi, I hope, would not have issues with Orthodox Jewish (or, for that matter, kabbalah) students forming their own student organizations and having their own meetings.

Calvin, University of Illinois, at 12:36 pm EDT on August 31, 2006

unbelievable irony

The marvelously ironic comment in the letter ("decision only after much dialogue with the Lord") reflects an arrogance usually attributed to religious leaders who claim a special knowledge and privilege that needs unquestioning followers to acknowledge and follow. It’s reasonable to have differing views — but please stop rationalizing poor leadership, inane reasoning, and spiratual pride.

tk, at 8:50 pm EDT on September 1, 2006

Look deeper into this issue and you will find that Georgetown received $20 Million from the Saudi Royal Family last December to enhance Muslim-Christian Relations. So it is interesting to find out once approved Christian Groups are now being banned. And it would be interesting to find out where in the Bible, it teaches that Christian Groups should be banned, if they are teaching Truth.

LW

LW, at 3:45 pm EDT on September 10, 2006