On Religion in the Upper Valley

Most of this issue focuses on religion at Dartmouth College. The beliefs of its students—and how those beliefs feature in campus life—are certainly an important part of the school’s culture and deserve far more focus than they typically get. However, Dartmouth is not really an isolated island in the wilderness. In fact, there is an entire town around Dartmouth called Hanover, inhabited by many people who have no direct concern with the school. Even more surprisingly, there are towns around Hanover as well, also distinct from Dartmouth. We at Dartmouth often ignore the greater Upper Valley, yet what happens beyond our campus still affects us. Dartmouth brings hundreds of professors and thousands of graduate students and thus greatly affects the composition of Hanover and nearby towns. In part, because of Dartmouth’s influence, the Upper Valley has changed much in recent years, and one notable way in which it has changed is religion. Namely, the Upper Valley stands out as particularly secular—even in New England. Religion is present and important to many people, but its role in the wider community is not obvious and its future is uncertain. 

As a decade-long Hanover resident, I have seen many different aspects of the Dartmouth community in my time here. As a boy scout in Norwich, I spent a lot of time working in the areas of the Upper Valley that are distinct from the culture propagated by Dartmouth. This small New England town culture is at the heart of the Upper Valley. Norwich, Hanover, and many of the other Upper Valley towns had farmers, hunters, small-scale manufacturing, and a culture based around the outdoors and a largely independent lifestyle. There are still remnants of this in Norwich, with much of the older population of the town indistinguishable from that of historical, rural Vermont. This old guard constitutes much of the religiosity of the Upper Valley, as many still regularly attend church and organize pageants, festivals, and other traditional religious celebrations. However, these elders are increasingly displaced. Every year more farms are turned into get-away homes for New Yorkers, and more and more pillars of the community either retire completely or pass away. Increasingly, they are replaced by academics and professionals from coastal cities, whose attitudes and culture differ greatly from the people whose homes they buy and festoon with smart toasters or whatever. 

With the fading of the rural population, so too fades religion in the Upper Valley. Certainly, many of the students and professors Dartmouth attracts are religious, and some even attend church outside of Easter and Christmas. However, even these few are unable to build the sort of traditional community that once formed the basis of town life in northern New England. Students are only here for four years. Professors often stay within the Dartmouth community exclusively and have kids who move away forever as soon as they graduate from Hanover High. This shift has been going on for decades but seems to have picked up pace in recent years. When I first moved to the Upper Valley, there were still relatively large church groups and Christmas pageants that drew crowds. It was hardly a pious community, but faith was present and noticeable. 

Yet, in the following years the older generation shrunk substantially, and more and more secular people moved into the town. COVID was apparently the final nail in the coffin. Churches were closed because, of course, the people of the Upper Valley fear quarantine more than they fear God, and no pageants or celebrations were held. In the interregnum, many of the remaining seniors responsible for motivating attendance faded away, and it would seem that some of the few young people who were left lost interest as a result. The few remaining churches are of the new-wave modern type, espousing pseudo-secular values and relegating traditional Christianity to the dustbin of history. Along with religion went much of the historical, local life, leaving behind little for Dartmouth students to explore. The result is a campus even more isolated from the wider town and a local community that views students as interlopers. When I have gone to church, I have seen my fellow students and the local attendees interact and get to know each other. Yet, I fear that there is simply too little attendance from both sides for churches to be able to bring together the disparate halves of the Upper Valley. 

This writer must confess that he is part of the intelligentsia moving to Hanover and bringing secularism with them. However, while not religious myself, I do believe that its decline in the Upper Valley contributes to our weakening sense of community. No longer do churches function as community centers that foster relationships and a feeling of togetherness. Most are now little more than nice-looking landmarks for tourism promoters to put in the background in their fall photo shoots. These days, few people live in the Upper Valley their whole lives. Teenagers move away when they graduate high school, college students leave after four years, and doctors and professors move away when they see a job posting with a better retirement plan. 

How can a community survive when those who would make it up are just passing through? Dartmouth’s size relative to the town which hosts it means that Hanover depends on the College. More and more, the cultural changes at Dartmouth are reflected in the town, and the non-Dartmouth population becomes more and more resentful of the school that is so drastically reshaping the community. While the decline of religion in the Upper Valley is in many ways independent of this relationship and can be accredited to New England’s trend towards secularism, I feel that Dartmouth bears some of the blame. Regardless, however, the end of the church-based community has had sad consequences for the region at large and so too for Dartmouth students during their time here.