What does the term " Protestant" mean in Protestant Campus Ministry?
Though it may sound as if we are against something, in its original context, the word 'protestant' was a positive statement, an affirmation. Back then in Western Europe in the sixteenth century, many people did not have access to the Bible because they could not read. Church culture at that time had developed a great anxiety about God. When anything went wrong, people tended to believe that God was out to get them. Martin Luther and others, who read and taught the scriptures, believed in reshaping or reforming the church around the view that God is, not against, but, as known in Jesus Christ, radically for us. It is this affirmation and the renewal of biblical teaching that became the great 'protest (to testify on behalf of)' or affirmation.
Today the churches that support Protestant Campus Ministries anchor their Christian witness in the great affirmation that God is 'for us,' meaning the whole of God's creation, both humanity and nature. This belief has led these churches to practice Christian faith with a passionate belief in Jesus Christ and an openness to what God is doing in our churches and among all people. Protestant faith today is evangelical (centered in the gospel of Christ), ecumenical (open to the world wideness of Christian sisters and brothers) and universal in our willingness to share with persons drawn in their own way to Christ's concerns for the hungry, the poor, the outcast and victims of injustice, including the planet itself. This kind of open, Protestant witness is what we support on the great campus of Stony Brook University.