About the Chester Ronning Centre

Our Purpose
To cultivate a deep understanding of issues and themes at the intersection of religion, faith and public life and, to do so in the public sphere and in religious spheres.

Our Mission
To nurture a hospitable context that brings forward the finest thinking of women and men of faith and the depth and texture of their traditions in conversation with public intellectuals and various secular ideologies on the nature and shape of public life in our age of pluralism.

Photo of Chester Ronning with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is courtesy

of the Noel and Wendy Cassady Collection, CRC.

Our Goal
To focus the work of scholars on issues and themes where religion, faith and public life intersect and to nurture the public conversation as well as religious understanding of these issues and themes. We will do this through:

interdisciplinary research and publications shaping a new community of scholars and public intellectuals
deep ethical reflections which draw on religious sources associated with human rights, our care for the life of the world and our understanding of difference
deepen the public understanding of the vital role of religious perspectives and their complex sources as they are brought to bear on public discourse
deepen the understanding within religious communities of the fragile and complex nature of the public sphere in a pluralistic society

Senior Staff and Associates

David J. Goa
Director, Ronning Centre

David Goa was born in 1944 to Solveig and Finn Goa who had immigrated from Norway to Canada. He is a native of Alberta and studied history, philosophy and the history of religions in Chicago. He counts the eminent philosophical theologian Paul Tillich, the scholar of religion Mircea Eliade, the historian Zenos Hawkinson, and, Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, among the scholars who have most influenced his work.

David has been involved in various research and documentation and communications projects both in Canada and abroad. He built the program for the study of culture through his field research work over thirty years at the Royal Alberta Museum. He lectures widely and is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles and is a regular contributor the media. His work focuses on religious tradition and modern culture, culture and the civil life, and on public institutions in service to cultural communities and modern civil society.

Dittmar Mündel
Associate Director, Ronning Centre

Rev. Dr. Mündel has been a faculty member of Augustana teaching in Religious Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies since 1980. He is committed to experience-based, community-engaged teaching and learning.

Rev. Dr. Mündel founded the interdisciplinary Development Studies program in 1994 and with it the Prairies-Mexico Rural Development Exchange (Now: Puebla-Alberta Community Service Exchange. See the PACSE website). He is also a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, ordained in 1970, who has been actively engaged in researching, lecturing, preaching and teaching for lay and clergy groups of a variety of denominations and faith communities in Canada, the United States, Ghana, Germany, and Mexico.

Community Education
Administrative Support for the Chester Ronning Centre
Office: 4316 - 38 Street, Camrose AB T4V 4B2 (off the Main Augustana Campus)
Phone: 780.679.1198 or 1-800-590-9984
Email:

About Us

About the Chester Ronning Centre