The Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life had its inaugural ceremony in the New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Sept. 13. The center reinstatement, in the works for the past few years, is finally established at Saint Anselm and will be hosting forums for discussions on the relationship between faith, its place in society, and its implications on societal issues.
“When the NHIOP was founded, it began with four study centers, and one was the Center for Religion and Public Life,” said Prof. Ward Holder, professor of the Theology and Politics Departments. After a period of time when the study centers fell away, but “director of the NHIOP, Neil Levesque, and Professor Peter Josephson started bringing this idea to administration to say ‘the Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life is really important at this point in our nation’s history,” Holder said.
After a long series of conversations, Dean Mark Cronin appointed Prof. Holder as the director of the center back in May. About 7 weeks away from the 2024 Presidential Election, Holder noted that “one of these political parties cannot win without Evangelical Christian votes, and that is the Republican party.” The alignment of particular religious views with these particular political views is a major question, and finding out why they correlate is one of the types of questions that the center looks to openly discuss.
“When we begin to look at this as a broader topic, we start to see enormous areas where society and religion are impacting each other, causing influences, and changing each other,” Holder said. Beyond politics, religion has an influence in various areas of life and society, and the center aims to have open conversations about these relationships and their implications on societal matters.
The open conversations hosted by the center will be occurring throughout the school year, and each discussion will focus on the relationship between religion and many different aspects of society. These conversations will feature faculty members across various academic departments at the college, but will stem beyond politics.
“We’re here to delve into these deep and messy issues,” Holder said. “Huge political questions, huge religious questions, huge interreligious questions,” are all studied and discussed openly with the center, looking for shared conversation amongst faculty and students who attend the forums, Holder said.
“The center will host an event near the election, where one of our trustees will talk about Catholicism and voting, and will be responded to by various members of the Saint Anselm community,” Holder said. “This will be a consequential election, and giving people the opportunity to learn,” the contours of the religion and how it impacts perspectives on voting will be essential to broadening the outlook on the relationship between religion and politics, Holder said.
These conversations host ideas to be shared with the support of a liberal arts education. The liberal arts education of Saint Anselm can hopefully provide a solid foundation in discussing not only what is happening, but why. “I would hope that liberal arts education and the Catholic and Benedictine tradition would equip people for,” these deep and messy discussions, Holder said.
“I’m a huge fan of students finding their voice, and you find your voice by engaging in the marketplace of ideas,” Holder said. Not only is student input welcomed in these conversations, but it is encouraged in “generous and compassionate ways,” Holder said. Respectful and open discourse, whether in accordance or disagreement, are “the backbone of any serious college or university,” Holder said.
The discourse events will be announced to the college to inform of time, location, and topic, all being held now that the inaugural reception of the center has taken place. “It went fabulous,” Holder said, with “20-25 of us,” in the turnout. “I thought it was a great opening event and I think we will grow from there,” Holder said.
“Vice President Liotta [at the reception] said why it really matters for Saint Anselm to be doing this, and Director Levesque spoke about how this fit in the mission of the NHIOP,” Holder said. “Prof. Josephson spoke about how it fit not only politics but the vision of liberal arts education here,” Holder said.
With faculty involvement ranging across academic disciplines, student involvement is also incorporated in the specifics of running the center. Michael Hanna ’26, a Politics and Theology major is the research assistant to Prof. Holder for the center.
As an advisee of Prof. Holder, when hearing about the center, “I was curious as to if he would need a research assistant,” Hanna said, and “it is a work study for me.”
“Right now [Holder] wants us looking at the impacts of Christian nationalism on the political sphere,” Hanna said, “but I’m doing a lot of social media for the center and focused mainly on publication.
“For me this was just something I was interested in, and the opportunity to work for [Holder] was something that I was working for anyways,” Hanna said.
The center is hosting its first event on Sept. 26 in the NHIOP Library, but be on the lookout for news on events in the future to attend and participate.