Dr. K Fans Georgetown’s Office of the Chaplain
Professor Joe Knippenberg of Oglethorpe University gets to the root of Georgetown’s decision to bar evangelical student ministries from participating as affiliate groups on campus:
There’s the root of Georgetown’s conflict with its erstwhile evangelical affiliates. It demands that everyone subscribe wholeheartedly to a thoroughgoingly pluralistic vision and suspects that the evangelicals don’t.
Let me state it another way. Georgetown’s evangelicals are practical or pragmatic pluralists. They experience and negotiate the intellectual, moral, and religious differences that characterize life on a contemporary university campus. They know that there will be disagreement and that all they can do is share the Word and let their lights shine. They cannot and would not compel anyone to accept even what they regard as a saving truth.
But that’s apparently not good enough for the authorities at Georgetown, who seem to want everyone to love pluralism with all their hearts, souls, and minds. Of course, if everyone affirms pluralism in this way, what you really end up with is a kind of deep uniformity, not genuine pluralism at all. Yes, there are differences, but everyone regards them as accidental and superficial, not worth shouting about, let alone (perish the thought!) fighting over.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:24 pm
As a recent Georgetown alum, I’d have to say this sounds pretty close to the truth. I didn’t comment on the original thread b/c I was unsure whether it was just some sort of bureaucratic spat or the product of more sustained ideology at work, but upon reflection I think the latter is more likely. Essentially, Georgetown’s Protestant services are limited to a “gospel style” service, clearly aimed at African American students, and a “liturgical Protestant” service, aimed at whatever practicing Episcopalians under the age of 80 are left in America. I’d heard Protestant friends complain about the campus ministry programs before, but I’d never quite realized how gaping the evangelical hole is. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the powers that be simply find the political and spiritual beliefs of mainstream white evangelicals unpalatable.