The Ian Shugart Lecture Series intends to honour the life and work of Ian Shugart by highlighting and exploring the creative possibilities, tensions, and realities that accompany the integration of faith and public life. The speakers of this series of annual lectures will take seriously the role that faith plays—even imperceptibly—in modern Canadian life, and how enduring commitments rooted in faith act as shaping forces of our life together. Ian was an exemplar of living his Christian faith in public life, and we want this lecture series to serve as inspiration for those seeking a better way to live their faith in public life. Ian’s life showed that it was possible, and we wish to honour him through this series.
Ian Shugart (May 31, 1957–October 25, 2023) is most widely remembered as a model Canadian public servant. His career spanned over forty years of service to Canada and ended with his appointments as the twenty-fourth clerk of the Privy Council and then as a Canadian senator. He died in office at the age of sixty-six, mourned by his wife, his three children, his colleagues, and all who had interactions with him in public life.
While everyone who met him describes Ian as a many of great dignity, Ian’s life, dedicated as it was to public service, was not preoccupied, motivated, or inspired by desire for dignitas, as it has been historically understood in classical political life.
His life and work were preoccupied, motivated, and inspired by a different sort of dignity. Not one rooted in actions or achievements, nor in desire for standing among peers or even recognition by history, but one rooted in seeing his fellow citizens as made in the image of God.
Inaugural Lecture: Ross Douthat
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2025
Time: 7:30pm (Doors open at 7:00pm)
Location: National Arts Centre – Canada Room (1 Elgin St, Ottawa, ON K1P 5W1)
Our inaugural speaker, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, consistently advocates for a society that is open toward religious faith and its public expression. He is known for showing how commitments rooted in faith often persist, sometimes making surprising appearances in modern life.
Even as religion seems to be on the decline across the Western world, and the landscape of faith shifts, Douthat routinely gores the sacred cows of a hard secularism that pushes faith behind closed doors. Not content merely to name the positive social contributions of faith and faith communities, Douthat boldly explores the deeper source of those contributions and the reality to which they point.
In his Shugart Lecture, Douthat will draw on his recently published book, “Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious” to make a provocative claim: that there is a clear and rational link between the reasonableness of faith and its public effects. His fearless charge will challenge both religious and non-religious people to wrestle with the reality of religion itself, the place of religion in our public policy debates, and how our shared norms may need to change.
