Edmund A. Opitz died

In memoriam, Edmund A. Opitz (1914-2006)

Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, a freedom champion, passed away at 92 years of age, on February 13th, 2006. 

In 1955, Opitz was invited by Leonard Read to be part of the Foundation For Economic Education (
FEE), where he worked as lecturer and publisher of book reviews in The Freeman, the foundations magazine.

Opitz also wrote for Faith and Freedom, The Contemporary Review  and for The New England Quarterly.   He was founding and coordinating of The Remnant, an organization of conservative and libertarian ministers.

In Maryville College, in 1936 he obtained a title in political sciences; and in the Pacific Unitarian School (now Starr King School), in 1939, he completed his studies in theology.

At the 60´s he published Religion and Capitalism: Allies, not Enemies; in which he explored the relationships between biblic religion and market econimics.

The philosophy Ed Opitz espoused is summed up in these three frases, taken from one of his FEE orbituary: «There is a place for government in the affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us precisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in behalf of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure him in his rights by making others let him alone.»

In the National Review magazine, father Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, wrote an orbituary that can be read,
here.   In it, Sirico explained that Ed was always careful in making notice that the Cristiandad, qua Cristiandad, didn´t offered a specific economic model in the same way that the economy, qua  economy didn´t had a specific moral model to offer; reason for which both needed one another.