Religious Rift

Problems with the Protestant Ministry

By: Corey Prachniak

Posted: 2/28/07

When Georgetown's Protestant Ministry effectively banned outside fellowship groups in August, many seemed to believe that it was due to their opposition to more evangelically-driven institutions.

Frustrated students as well as a Protestant Ministry reverend, who resigned in protest, all publicly suggested that if Protestant Ministry was not purposely targeting Evangelicals, it had certainly hurt them.

But months later, some are taking a different perspective.

Stephanie Brown, worship leader for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship-the largest group that was affected-thought these claims were mainly media-driven. "I don't feel like the media ever had a genuine sense of what was happening," she says, adding that the Protestant Ministry has some strong ties to evangelism itself and that many InterVarsity members are not evangelical at all.

"Evangelical" applies especially to the outside ministries as it emphasizes a personal, conversion-based relationship with God and places heavy importance on sharing the Christian message with others.

The university has assembled a clandestine committee to make a ruling regarding the issue, but it will likely not be issued for months.

Meanwhile, students like Brown stay positive and hope for the best. While challenging, Brown contends that the situation has allowed them to reach out to different groups and people that they otherwise would not have, such as H*yas for Choice, which offered suggestions on how to exist as a group without university sponsorship. She added, "there's potential for what comes out to be better."

The larger group is about more than just reconciliation-it's about working towards a cross-campus Christian community that breaks through both the ideological differences and the bureaucratic red tape. Diane Tager, InterVarsity's service coordinator, believes that this "would be kind of a daunting task when you think about the fact that Protestant students aren't united yet," which is why that needs to be their first steps.

But Heather Pearson, another Protestant student involved, agrees that the system itself seems to pose the greatest challenge. "Using official Campus Ministry channels, students are divided into 'Catholic' or 'Protestant' rather than encouraged to look to shared core beliefs that make them all Christians."

For a Jesuit university, the prospect of being unable to mend a rift between the Protestant Ministry and outside fellowship groups could represent a threat to Georgetown's underlying religious mission.

Prachniak is an arts and sciences sophomore.