The Rev. Albino F. Barrera is a Catholic priest and professor of theology and economics at Providence College in Providence, R.I. He is the author of the 2006 book God and the Evil of Scarcity: Moral Foundations of Economic Agency and the 2005 book Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics.

Eduardo Peñalver is a professor at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, N.Y., where he teaches property, land use and a course on Catholic social thought and the law. He writes frequently about the economy and justice. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, and he is a blogger at Commonweal.

Robert T. Miller is a professor of law at the University of Iowa and a former associate professor at the Villanova University School of Law. He wrote an article for the First Things blog titled “A Conservative Case for the Paulson Plan,” arguing for the $700 billion bailout package.

Daniel Finn is a professor of theology and economics St. John’s School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, Minn. He is the author of the 2006 book The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims About Markets and Justice. He wrote an article in the Sept. 26, 2008, edition of Commonweal magazine, “Libertarian Heresy: The Fundamentalism of Free-Market Theology.”

Rebecca M. Blank is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, specializing in economics and social policy. She is a past dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and former co-director of the National Poverty Center. Blank is co-author of Is the Market Moral?: A Dialogue on Religion, Economics […]

A 2008 survey from the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron shows a marked shift (Tables 5 and 6) from 2004 to 2008 in the priorities of religious voters from social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, to economic issues. The survey also shows (Table 7) how different faith groups […]

Read a Sept. 26, 2008, letter from Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, urging the Bush administration and Congress to consider the moral aspects of the current financial crisis.

Read a Sept. 17, 2008, column at Crosswalk.com, “Wall Street’s Troubles Are No Reason to Fear,” by Chuck Colson, a conservative evangelical Christian leader. Colson says the economic system is secure, but the crisis is a moral wake-up call for Americans.

Read a Sept. 18, 2008, column, “Greed in the Economy,” by Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners and a leader of the “religious left.” Wallis traces the financial crisis to greed and deregulation.