Toward a Free and Virtuous Society: The Moral Case for Market Economics

Paul J. Bonicelli, Ph.D. served as executive vice president at Regent University (VA), provost at Houston Baptist University (TX), and dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College (VA). He began his teaching career as assistant professor of political science at Grove City College (PA) and has taught as an adjunct professor for the Rep. Bill Archer Fellows Program of the University of Texas in Washington, DC. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Tennessee, an MA in Public Policy from Regent University, and a BA in English from the University of Memphis. Prior to embarking on a career in higher education, he served as a researcher and analyst in Washington, DC on trade issues and democracy promotion.

1. J. Daryl Charles is a 2018 Affiliate Scholar of the Acton Institute, serves as a contributing editor of the journal Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy and the journal Touchstone, and is an affiliated scholar of the John Jay Institute. Charles is author, co-author or editor of fifteen books, including, most recently, (with Mark David Hall) America’s Wars: A Just War Perspective(University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming), Natural Law and Religious Freedom: The Role of Moral First Things in Grounding and Protecting the First Freedom(Routledge, 2017), (with David B. Capes) Thriving in Babylon: Essays on Honor of A.J. Conyers (Pickwick, 2011), A Return to Moral First Things: Retrieving the Natural Law (Eerdmans, 2008), and Virtue amidst Vice (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).

Victor Claar is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise at Florida Gulf Coast University and an affiliate scholar of the Acton Institute. A past Fulbright Scholar at the American University of Armenia, Professor Claar has a long, impressive record of publications, including his influential book, Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy and Life Choices (2007), now in its fifth printing and recently translated into Chinese. Professor Claar is also the author of Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution (2012), an incisive, thoughtful work that challenges us all to rethink how we buy what we need and want. You can follow him on Twitter @ VictorClaar.

Trey Dimsdale came to the Acton Institute from Fort Worth, Texas, where he served as the Associate Director and Research Fellow in Law and Public Policy for the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement. At the Land Center, Trey helped to administrate a very active calendar of events that involved students, academics, and pastors from around the broader Christian world. Trey is actively involved as a board member and advisor for the National Faith and Work Association, the Lausanne Movement’s Workplace Forum, and as an organizer of a program in the Balkans that seeks to equip unemployed and underemployed young people to launch new businesses.

P.J. Hill, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and senior fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), in Bozeman, Mont. He received his B.S. in agricultural economics from Montana State University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. His latest book, with Terry Anderson, is The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (2004).

Stephen Presley, Ph.D. holds degrees from Baylor University, Dallas Seminary, and the University of St. Andrews. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Church History and Director of the Southwestern Center for Early Christian Studies. He teaches a variety of graduate and postgraduate courses in Church History and Patristics at Southwestern. His research and teaching are intentionally interdisciplinary and he integrates Biblical Studies, theology and history. His areas of research include early Christian theology and exegesis, the church fathers, second century, historical theology, biblical theology, and history of biblical interpretation.