Coming Events
Details about our Fall 2012 programming will be available in August 2012. Watch here for announcements or sign up for our email list by contacting Rebecca Warren.
Fall 2012 Course: Caring for All Creation
Join Dittmar Mündel and David Goa Fall 2012 for AUREL272, a Religion and Public Life course focused on "Caring for All Creation," offered on the Augustana Campus in Camrose. This for-credit course is open to students, as well as members of the public who wish to sit in on the conversation. For more information, see the course poster or contact Rebecca Warren.
In the News
David Goa was quoted in "Freedom of Religion Under Threat," Edmonton Journal, May 14, 2012.
David Goa has an article in the latest issue of Material Religion on "The Gifts and Challenges of Anno Domini."
The Western Catholic Reporter published an article titled "Professor Sketches Links Between Prophets and Alberta Economy" about Dittmar Mündel's talk on "Faith, Farming, and Oil."
The Calgary Herald published an article about David Goa's upcoming lecture series, "The Christian Responsibility to Muslims."
The Political Science Department at the University of Alberta hosted the 16th Annual Distinguished Lecture in Political Science with Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im on Thursday, September 29, 2011. An audio file of the talk entitled, "Difference, Globalization, and the Limits of Secularization" is available here.
David Goa was interviewed August 30, 2011 by Chicago Public Media's "Worldview" program about the Keystone pipeline. A podcast of the interview can be found here.
About the Ronning Centre
The Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life is the first (and only) gathering point in a public university in Canada focusing on a broad range of themes where religion and public life intersect. To the discussion of vital issues that often call forth deeply emotional responses, it seeks to bring original contributions that embody the highest standards of academic scholarship.
While rooted in the academy, our activities relate no less to the public square and the full range of religious communities, bringing the depth and texture of the most varied religious and civil ideas into a hospitable and constructive conversation. Scholars of the Centre are recruited locally, regionally, and nationally. Through partnerships with other institutions, our work has become increasingly international in scope.
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.
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