Rev. Edmund Opitz has died at age 92. He spent his career advocating individual liberty in a mostly religious context at both the Foundation for Economic Education and before that, at the unjustly obscure Spiritual Mobilization. He started his religious life as a Unitarian minister, but resigned that ministry and switched to Congregationalism in the early 1960s. He was an indefatigable correspondent, trying to spread his vision of God-rooted minimal-state libertarianism to everyone from Reinhold Niebuhr to Mildred Loomis. He was an early booster of the curious syncretist religious figure, and early psychedelic pioneer, Gerald Heard and a huge fan of Old Right-libertarian essayist Albert Jay Nock and founder of the Nockian Society.
Kenneth Gregg provides a link-filled note on his passing here.
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|2.17.06 @ 2:32PM|#
All comfort to his family and friends.
I remember enjoying his essays in the Foundation for Economic Education journal; The Freeman.
|2.18.06 @ 1:19PM|#
A very long and full life. I too read him in the Freeman and thought he'd died years ago.
Tom G. Palmer|2.20.06 @ 8:15PM|#
Ed Opitz was a gentleman and provided an eloquent voice for freedom. He is sorely missed.
fyodor|2.23.06 @ 5:25PM|#
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