As reported by the Washington Times on August 26 (and the WaPost on August 27), Georgetown's Protestant chaplaincy has ordered six evangelical Protestant groups not affiliated with the university to cease their ministry activities and presence on campus. (They aren't going without a fight.)The first Post and the Washington Timesarticles explain the story this way: the Protestant chaplaincyrecently reorganized, and decided they wanted more control over the wayProtestant students--one-fifth of the student body--were ministered to.Georgetown spokesman Erik Smulson cited "communication andcoordination" problems with some private ministries: "It washard for [the] Campus Ministry [Office] to keep track of them." Leadersand members of these groups said private ministries havebeen welcomed "on and off for decades.""A key issue," the Post says, "is whether these groups proselytize." The CampusMinistry Office asked these groups what they tell students "behindclosed doors," according to an official with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, one of the groups involved. Georgetown spokesman Smulson, however, said theProtestant chaplaincy simply wants "to build the ministry fromwithin...rather than rely on outside groups or fellowships."The dustup has been noted on a few Catholic blogs. After observing that Georgetown is "a general embarrassment at religion," Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, floated the following interpretation of the situation:

The problem, of course, finally boils down to this: The evangelical groupsrepresent only a few hundred students, but they are strongly prolife andopposed to homosexual marriage. The mainline Protestant employees of CampusMinistry find such things embarrassing, and so they kick the evangelicals offcampus, employing the power of the officially Catholic chaplains office and therhetoric of the schools Catholic identity.Although Bottum offers no support for his theory, he may be alluding to the legal battles some evangelical groups are waging with state universities that won't recognize them owing to their policy of not admitting homosexual students or those who won't pledge Christian beliefs. He doesn't say.But perhaps Bottum had something else in mind. Scripps-Howard columnist Terry Mattingly's most recent column contains the same theory, as voiced by " a conservative Catholic activist and Georgetown alum":

In his opinion, the key to the ban on independent Protestant ministries is "thefact that all of these groups take very orthodox positions on the crucial socialissues, like gay rights and abortion. If anything, they're more Catholic onthese issues than lots of Catholics there."The activist alumnus is Manuel Miranda--formerpresident of the Cardinal Newman Society. The New Republic profiled him last summer, and the Hill ran a piece on him last November. Miranda, as Michael Crowley's piece makes clear, has had a remarkably active career as an activist. In 2001, Crowley reports, he testified beforethe Senate Judiciary Committee on the subject of religious liberty,and soon after was hired by the committee's chairman, Orrin Hatch. Twoyears later, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hired him as top counsel. From that influential perch, he ran the GOP strategy to confirm judges Democrats had blocked (via filibuster and other means).Then Miranda did something bad. In 2003, he leaked internal Democratic memos outlining their strategy regarding judicial nominees whose confirmation they opposed. Because of a computer error, Miranda could access these documents without a password. The documents appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. He resigned from Frist's office, and is the subject of a federal investigation. He doesn't believe he did anything wrong. "You have no ethical duty to your opposition," according to Miranda.Why, then, should Miranda be counted on as a reliable observer of the campus-ministry situation at Georgetown? Why would Mattingly run his remarks at all, let alone without comment from Georgetown Campus Ministry? To be sure, they aren't easy to get a hold of (I can't get a return call or e-mail from the Protestant chaplaincy). But the column shows no evidence that they were even contacted.Perhaps, it may be argued, that wouldn't be enough for accuracy. If Miranda shouldn't be trusted as a fair broker, why believe Georgetown officials would provide anything more than the safest comment? This has an obvious answer, yet even granting the objection, perhaps it would be a good idea to turn to the students involved, such as Stephanie Brown, a member of the leadership team for InterVarsity at Georgetown.Brown has taken up the unhappy job of clarifying certain aspects of this complicated story on a few Web sites. At Inside Higher Ed, she responded to accusations that InterVarsity and other such groups were "sowing seeds of hate" with respect to their positions on homosexuality and abortion. She wrote:

In this current situation, we have had support from students in all manner ofcampus groups, including H*yas for Choice, GU Pride, and the Jewish chaplaincy.If Brown is to be believed, one of the groups supposedly beingdiscriminated against by Georgetown because of their anti-gay marriage and antiabortionpositions actually has the support of the gay-rights and prochoice studentgroups.So, whats really going on here? If the Bottum-Mirandatheory is wrong, is there any chance that Georgetownspokesman Smulson is correct? More as it develops