Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was the younger brother of the famous Karl Polanyi, one of the staunchest critics historically of Western society and capitalist values. Trained as a physician, Polanyi undertook a career as a chemist.

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Girolamo Zanchi

On February 2, 1516, Girolamo Zanchi was born in the northern Italian city of Alazano. Orphaned at age fourteen, Zanchi joined the local monastery of the Augustinian Order of Regular Canons.

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Bartholomew de Las Casas

Bartholomew de Las Casas was born in Seville, Spain. He studied law at the University of Salamanca, where the Dominicans were wrestling with moral issues raised by the conquest of the New World.

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James Fenimore Cooper

James Cooper—he added “Fenimore” later—was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey. He came from a devout, but eclectic religious family. While his parents were Quakers, they also attended Episcopal and Presbyterian services.

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Carl F. H. Henry

Born on January 22, 1913, to German immigrants in New York City, Carl F. H. Henry was not raised in a religious family environment. In 1933, while Henry was editor of The Smithtown Star and a stringer for The New York Times, Henry met with a man named Gene Bedford.

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John Winthrop

John Winthrop was born in Suffolk, England, and grew up at Groton Manor, his father's estate in the English countryside. Preparing to take his father's place as the lord of Groton Manor, Winthrop studied law. He wanted to obtain the expertise needed to handle landlord-tenant disputes, collect rents, and deal with government authorities.

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Ferdinando Galiani

Born in Chieti, Italy, Ferdinando Galiani was raised in Naples. Galiani was the nephew of the famous archbishop Coelestino Galiani. The archbishop made sure his nephew received a top quality education. The intention was for Galiani to serve the church as a member of the clergy someday.

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St. Bernardino of Siena

St. Bernardino of Siena, the “Apostle of Italy,” was a missionary, reformer, and scholastic economist. He was born of the noble family of Albizeschi in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. After taking care of the sick during a great plague in Siena in 1400, he entered the Franciscan order. He became a well-known and popular preacher, traveling throughout Italy on foot. He was offered bishoprics three times during his ministry, which he refused because he would have had to give up what he felt was his primary calling, that of a missionary.

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When he was eight-years-old, Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with some relatives of his master. Shortly after his arrival his new mistress taught him the alphabet. Her husband forbade her to continue this instruction, but Douglass was undeterred.

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Richard M. Weaver

Richard M. Weaver lived a life of hard work, self-sacrifice, and quiet virtue. Although he taught English at the University of Chicago for the bulk of his career, he remained deeply attached to the traditions of his upbringing in North Carolina.

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Edward A. Keller, C.S.C.

"The encyclicals do not condemn our economic system of free enterprise, but instead give a strong moral foundation for such a system."

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John Locke

Philosopher John Locke, along with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes, is often blamed by Christian social ethicists for misappropriating the natural law tradition, articulating unbiblical views of human nature, and generally secularizing modern Western political reflection.

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