President
James M. Patterson
Associate Professor of Politics
Ave Maria University
James Patterson received his B.A. in Political Science and Media Studies at the University of Houston in 2002 and his Ph.D. in American Politics from the University of Virginia in 2012. His areas of research include race, religion, and American political development. He has held research positions at the Program for American Values and Institutions at Duke University and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, as well as teaching positions at Hampden-Sydney College and Gettysburg College. He is currently a Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy.
He has published academic work in American Political Thought, Journal of Church and State, and Perspectives on Political Science. He has published more popular essays and book reviews for National Affairs, Modern Age, Society, Law and Liberty, and Public Discourse. In early 2019, the University of Pennsylvania Press published his first book, Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, and Falwell. This book examines how very different religious leaders–Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Rev. Jerry Falwell–sought to influence national politics by preaching their interpretation of American political foundations to both the voting public and political elites. He is currently working on his next book, a compilation of the political and social thought of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
He lives in Ave Maria, Florida, with his wife and three children.
Board Chairman
William Batchelder IV
Associate Professor of History & Director of the Honors Program
Waynesburg University
Bill Batchelder received his M.A. in History from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and an M.A., Ph.D. from The Ohio State University where he received the Graduate Teaching Award. Bill is currently the co-editor on a forthcoming edited volume “Fellow Readers: Interdisciplinary Applications and Interpretations of the Social Theory of Philip Rieff.” He has contributed articles to Anamnesis, The Imaginative Conservative, Nomocracy in Politics, and most recently has co-authored an article with Kevin Slack published at VoegelinView, “Susan Sontag was not the sole Author of Freud: Mind of the Moralist.”
Bill is married and homeschooling two girls and twin boys.
Vice-President
Joshua J. Bowman
Josh Bowman is the former Executive Director of the Ciceronian Society. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hope College in Holland, MI through the end of the Spring 2023 semester. He previously served from 2018-2022 as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio where he taught courses in American politics, law, environmental studies, and political philosophy.
Josh was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Eric Voegelin Institute of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (2016-2018). He completed his MA/PhD in Politics at the Catholic University of America (2016) in Washington, DC and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at Lee University (2008) in Cleveland, TN.
Josh’s scholarly research focuses on the history of political philosophy and the intersection of Christianity and imagination with politics and thought, especially as it pertains to environmental politics. His first book, Imagination and Environmental Politics: the Aftermath of Thoreau was published in 2018 by Lexington Books.
In addition to teaching and writing, Josh is the former Communications Director for Christians in Political Science and previously served as the managing editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Anamnesis. He is also a former Wilbur Fellow with the Russell Kirk Center.
Josh is a member of the Anglican Church in North America; specifically, All Saints Anglican Church in Holland, MI. Though born and raised in Monroe, Michigan, he and his wife met at Lee University in Tennessee. They currently live in Western Michigan with two young children.
To learn more about Josh, visit his website at: http://bowmanjosh.com
Treasurer
John Robinson
Assistant Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences
James Madison University
John Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University, where he teaches in the Intelligence Analysis Program. He previously served in JMU’s Economics Department, teaching introductory courses in both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, as well as upper-level electives in the History of Economic Thought, Political Economy, and Economics and Ethics. Robinson received his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in 2016, with fields in Political Economy and History of Economic Thought writing his dissertation under Daniel Klein on Adam Smith’s theory of property.
John’s research has been published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Private Enterprise, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, Econ Journal Watch, and The Independent Review.
John lives in Harrisonburg, VA with his wife and their five children.
To learn more about John and his work, visit https://www.johnandrewrobinson.com/