Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

Mr. Dys graduated from Taylor University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, degree in Communication Studies while concentrating his minor study in U.S. History and Philosophy. During his undergraduate career, Dys also studied at the American Studies Program in Washington, D.C. where he interned with the late David Orgon Coolidge as part of the Marriage Law Project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

John Graves became the president of Vision America in January 2017. Prior to assuming leadership of Vision America, John served as a board member and in various roles alongside its founder, Dr. Rick Scarborough, mobilizing and encouraging pastors and Christians across the country to be voices of truth to our nation. For over 30 years, John has served pastors in local churches and parachurch organizations after becoming a Christ-follower in 1986 during his sophomore year in college.

John is bi-vocational, having been ordained a pastor by Pastor Jack Hayford, and he serves local church pastors. He also owns a small business with his close friend and partner. His business background led him to applying business principles, empirical evidence, and measured return on investment to all efforts to reach pastors and people of faith. He created heat maps of both churches and social conservatives in each state that led to each dollar being strategically stewarded for maximum impact.

Once “anti-political,” John felt compelled to become involved in the aftermath of the attack on our nation on September 11, 2001. He soon ran for U.S. Congress in Texas, and the lessons learned from that process created many of the cutting-edge ideas used by Vision America to reach people of faith.

John is convinced that when Christians, and especially pastors, lead others to become involved in community issues, they can and do make a massive impact on the culture. He served a pastor in a predominately African-American church for several years after law school, and he planted several college and young adult ministries in different local churches of varying denominations. These experiences have given him a unique passion to serve the younger generation, all denominations, and minority pastors with the unique challenges they face.

His was invited as an expert on church efforts to a think-tank leadership group with other national leaders in different fields of expertise with the goal of true inner-city revitalization efforts for the poor and those in need.

His beliefs that God gave leaders as gifts to the Church and that Jesus is the only hope for any nation led him to develop Acts 20:28 Pastors, bringing resources and breakthrough technology to today’s church leaders to help mobilize people of faith to vote. The result of this work led to pastors across the nation joining our efforts and the reclassification of Vision America as an Association of Churches by the IRS.
His efforts to serve people of faith led him to create church-approved voter guides in elections - with broad, factual support on issues and hyperlinks to footnotes - and new technological methods directly micro-targeted these non-partisan voter guides through home Wi-Fi and social media to over 5 million Christians. Vision America provides these voter guides for free to pastors and people of faith.

John received his B.B.A. in accounting at the University of Texas at Tyler in 1990 and won statewide awards for advocacy. He received his law degree at Texas Tech University School of Law in 1993 and was selected to the National Order of Barristers. John currently serves on the board of Jack Hayford Ministries and King’s Ransom Foundation. He and his wife, Nicole, have five children, and actively serve in their local church.

By: First Liberty Staff - firstliberty.org - October 2018 Case History Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a popular organization that seeks to “engage, equip and empower” coaches and athletes to “unite, inspire and change the ...

By: Jeremy Dys - wsj.com - October 11, 2018 As a lowly corporal, Milton Edward Hartman’s death shouldn’t have drawn much attention. But on a summer day in 1919, it seemed as if half the ...

The real Vision America voter guide is on the left. The fake version is on the right. By: Todd Starnes - toddstarnes.com - November 1, 2018 Authorities are investigating fake voter guides promoting Democrat Robert ...

By: The Washington Times - washingtontimes.com - October 30, 2018 Some things are simple and exact, like a chemical formula or the multiplication tables. Equally simple by logic: Everyone who votes should be eligible to ...

By: Merrill Matthews - ipi.org - October 2, 2018 Synopsis: The health insurance system has failed America. Most of the blame lies with state and especially federal government intervention. Lawmakers have increasingly abandoned long-standing actuarial ...

By: Merrill Matthews - arcamax.com - October 30, 2018 President Donald Trump is sending federal troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and taking other steps to stop the Honduran migrant caravan headed for the United States. ...

By: Hans von Spakovsky - dailysignal.com - November 01, 2018 President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he is preparing an executive order to end birthright citizenship has the left and even some conservatives in an ...

By: George T. Conway III & Neal Katyal - washingtonpost.com - October 30, 2018 Sometimes the Constitution’s text is plain as day and bars what politicians seek to do. That’s the case with President Trump’s ...