Speakers
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University.
Professor George is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and formerly served as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission
on Civil Rights. He was Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award.
He is the author of In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, and
The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis. He has published numerous scholarly articles and book reviews.
Professor George is a recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2005 Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement and the
Stanley Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award from Princeton's Department of Politics. He holds honorary doctorates of law, ethics, letters,
science and humane letters and is the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago.
Jean Elshtain is a political philosopher whose task has been to show the connections between our political and ethical convictions.
She is the author of several books and scores of articles as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and chair of the
Council on Civil Society. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and is
currently on the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center and on the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy.
She has been a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, is the recipient of nine honorary degrees, and received the 2002 Frank J. Goodnow Award, the
American Political Science Association's highest award for distinguished service to the profession. In 2003, Professor Elshtain was the
second holder of the Maguire Chair in Ethics at the Library of Congress. In 2006, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the
Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and also delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh,
joining such previous Gifford Lecturers as William James, Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The lectures are forthcoming
under the title Sovereignties: God, State, and Self (2008).
Hadley Arkes, Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions, Amherst College
Hadley Arkes has been a member of the Amherst College faculty since 1966. He was the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence,
and was appointed, in 1987, as the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions. He has written five books with Princeton University press:
Bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (1972), The Philosopher in the City (1981),
First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994).
His most recent book, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, was published by Cambridge University Press in the fall of 2002.
Professor Arkes has been the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to
preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of "natural rights" taught by the American Founders and Lincoln.
Russell D. Moore, Dean of the School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Russell D. Moore has served as the Senior Vice President for Academic Administration and Dean of the School of Theology at Southern
Seminary since January of 2004. Dr. Moore is also a preaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, where he ministers weekly.
Dr. Moore writes and speaks frequently on topics ranging from the Kingdom of God to the mission of adoption to a theology of country music.
He is a senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. He has written books such as
The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective and a forthcoming volume,
Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches. Prior to entering the ministry, he was an aide to
U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor.
Harry L. Poe, Charles Colson Professor of Faith & Culture, Union University
Harry Lee Poe serves as Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He has written
several books and numerous articles on how the gospel intersects with culture; including Christianity in the Academy, The Gospel
and Its Meaning, Christian Witness in a Postmodern World, The Designer Universe, Science and Faith: An Evangelical Dialogue,
and See No Evil: The Existence of Sin in an Age of Relativism. Poe also serves as president of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum of Richmond, Virginia.
Gregory A. Thornbury, Dean of the School of Christian Studies, Union University
Gregory Alan Thornbury, PhD is the founding Dean of the School of
Christian Studies at Union University, where he teaches philosophy and
theology. Since 2002, He has served as Senior Fellow for The Kairos
Journal (New York), an online research tool designed to help pastors
and church leaders engage public square issues. The editor of two
volumes and the author of numerous essays, his work has appeared in
The American Spectator, Breakpoint Magazine, and other publications.
In addition to his work at Union University, he has become a popular
campus lecturer and conference speaker on the intersection between
theology and culture.
David Novak, Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto
David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy
at the University of Toronto since 1997. He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1961, his M.H.L. (Master of Hebrew Literature)
in 1964 and his rabbinical diploma in 1966 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from
Georgetown University in 1971. Professor Novak is the author of thirteen books, the latest being
The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Poltitcal Theology (Princeton University Press, 2005). His fourteenth book,
The Sanctity of Human Life: Three Essays, was published by Georgetown University Press in fall 2007. His book,
Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2000), won the award of the American Academy of
Religion for "best book in constructive religious thought in 2000." He has edited four books, and is the author of over 200 articles in
scholarly and intellectual journals.
James Stoner, Professor of Political Science, Louisiana State University
Professor James R. Stoner, Jr. has teaching and research interests in political theory, English common law, and American constitutionalism.
He is the author of Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003) and Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke,
Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 1992), as well as a number of articles and essays. In 2002-03 he was a
visiting fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He served from 2002 to 2006 on the
National Council on the Humanities, to which he was appointed by President Bush.
Christopher Tollefsen, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina
Chris Tollefsen is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, the director of the graduate
program in philosophy. He received his doctorate from Emory University in 1995 and has taught at Princeton University, the Spiritan Institute of
Philosophy in Ghana, and since 1997 the University of South Carolina. He is the author of several articles and reviews as well as two books,
Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry published by Routledge, and with co-author Robert P. George,
Embryo: A Secular Defense of Life, published by Doubleday.
Paul E. Kerry, Associate Professor of History, Brigham Young University
Paul E. Kerry is an associate professor in the Department of History and member of the European Studies faculty.
His training spans several universities including Oxford, Harvard, and Chicago and his publications have engaged with European
intellectual history, transatlantic ideas, and historiography. His book on Goethe and Enlightenment thought is scheduled for
paperback release this year. He is an associate editor of the University of California Press Carlyle edition and has served
as editor for volumes on Goethe, Schiller, Carlyle, and Mozart. His forthcoming publications include articles on
Benjamin Franklin (Cambridge UP) and on Thomas Carlyle (Fairleigh Dickinson UP). Last year he co-organized the
Transatlantic Ideas of the American Founding conference at the University of Edinburgh. He has been awarded fellowships at
Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2007-2008 he was the Ann and Herbert W. Vaughan
Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University.
Center for Politics & Religion at Union University
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