Georgetown Evicts Evangelical Groups

George­town Uni­ver­si­ty just kicked six cam­pus min­istries off cam­pus.

Cam­pus Min­istry Removes Affil­i­ates — The Hoya (cam­pus paper)
George­town Rejects Evan­gel­i­cal Groups — Inside High­er Ed (col­lege news blog)

Chi Alpha was among the groups banned. Pray for God’s peace and wis­dom to attend the lead­ers of the group as they decide what to do next.

At Stan­ford we are for­tu­nate to have a very strong rela­tion­ship with the Deans for Reli­gious Life. How­ev­er, the news from George­town is a reminder that this isn’t the only pos­si­ble state of affairs.

Paul was very wise when he remind­ed Tim­o­thy to pray for his impe­r­i­al over­lords.

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, inter­ces­sion and thanks­giv­ing be made for everyone—for kings and all those in author­i­ty, that we may live peace­ful and qui­et lives in all god­li­ness and holi­ness.”
1 Tim 2:1–2, NIV

I often tell stu­dents that this is the foun­da­tion of a sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. We want the gov­ern­ment (and any oth­er bureau­crat­ic bod­ies) to leave us free to wor­ship with­out oner­ous over­sight or reg­u­la­tion — because exter­nal involve­ment nev­er works out to our advan­tage in the long run.

In any event, my prayers are with those just boot­ed from George­town (and with the Chi Alpha folks in par­tic­u­lar as sev­er­al of them are close friends).