Religion and the Free Economy; E. Opitz

You rise hotly to the defense of your favorite subject, and the bat tle is joined. Within five minutes it becomes evident to the innocent by stander that the economics you are defending is not the economics your adversary is attacking. The thing he knows as "economics" is the set of conjectures and prescrip tions drawn from the Marx, Keynes, Galbraith well; whereas for you, "economics" connotes the body of thought associated with men like Adam Smith, Mises, and Hayek. It's possible that YOU:r ac quaintance has never heard of the The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Educa tion, a seminar lecturer, and author of the book, Religion and Capitalism: Allies Not Enemies. Austrian School, but his general "feel" for things has already made him simpatico. He has rejected un sound ideas, and this opens up the possibility that he might accept sound ones. But even if he repudi ates the Austrian School along with the Keynesian, you and he now have the same referent and are no longer talking past each other; you're that much ahead.

And so it is with the great themes of religion and God; the same words stand for different things to different people. Take religion: Men and women in every age and clime have sought to re late to an unseen order; call it the spiritual realm, if you prefer, to distinguish it from the social· order and the order of nature. We live in some society, we are in touch with nature - and we also partici pate in a dimension which tran scends them and us. People seek to come to terms with this unseen order by means of an enormous variety of attitudes, beliefs, and practices. These numerous, diverse, 289 290 THE FREEMAN May and sometimes contradictory activ ities are then pulled, hauled and pounded into a single category bearing the label "religion." This taxonomic barbarism - this crude labeling - will not satisfy the phil osophically-minded, who know that much if not most of what is labeled religion is more properly called magic, superstition, or ideology.