Contact: Kristin Hansen, Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, 703-962-7818

MCLEAN, Va., March 7, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- Institute for Faith, Work & Economics™ (IFWE) announced Wednesday that Jay W. Richards, Ph.D. has joined its team as Visiting Scholar to help guide the Institute's research framework and serve as a spokesperson. Richards is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute where he directs the Center on Wealth, Poverty and Morality, and most recently, he is the co-author with James Robison of the best-selling Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late.

IFWE's Executive Director Hugh Whelchel said Richards brings both an academic and communications expertise to the IFWE team. "Jay has years of experience thinking through the issues of stewardship and economics from a Biblical perspective and effectively challenging audiences across the nation with these principles," Whelchel said. "He's a fantastic addition to our team as we strive to equip and inspire Christians with a Biblical theology of work and economics."

In addition to writing many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects, he recently edited the new award winning anthology, God & Evolution: Protestants, Catholics and Jews Explore Darwin's Challenge to Faith. His previous book was Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009), for which he received a Templeton Enterprise Award in 2010.

Richards is also executive producer of several documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Birth of Freedom, and Effective Stewardship (Acton Media and Zondervan, 2009). He has been featured in several television-broadcast documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Case for a Creator, The Wonder of Soil, and The Privileged Planet, based on his book, The Privileged Planet, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez.

In recent years, he has been a Contributing Editor of The American at the American Enterprise Institute, a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute. Richards has a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), and a Ph.D. (with honors) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics™ (IFWE) is a Biblical advocacy think tank dedicated to equipping Christians with a Biblical theology of work and economics. For more information, visit the IFWE blog "Creativity - Purpose - Freedom" and the Institute's website: www.tifwe.org.