Distinguished Scholars Headline Fraser Forum

May 1982

Religion and capitalism, are they two irreconcilable enemies or mutual friends? That is the topic that the Fraser Institute will explore in two all day forums to be held on the 5th and 12th of August.

For many years the mainstream religions have been promoting variations of the socialist ethic. The profit motive, greed and selfishness have been denounced in the same breath with that dreadful monster, capitalism.

And while the rise to prominence of the fundamentalist Moral Majority may have led some to believe that religion is starting to look favorably on the free market, it is these self-same fundamentalists who would meddle with the market in the form of blue laws, censorship and other restrictions of individual liberty.

The Fraser Institute's Forum will feature prominent theologians and scholars who cherish individual liberty and the capitalist system. They include James Sadowsky, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and a longtime friend of Murray Rothbard; David Friedman, Professor of Economics at UCLA, author of The Machinery of Freedom and son of Milton Friedman; Edmund Opitz of the Foundation for Economic Education, author of Religion & Capitalism: Allies Not Enemies; Arthur Shenfield; Ludwig von Mises, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, author of Capitalism Under the Test of Ethics; John Chant, Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University; Paul Heyne, Professor of Economics at the University of Washington and author of the best-selling university textbook The Economic Way of Thinking; Imad Ahmad, Islamic scholar and chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia; Walter Berns of the American Enterprise Institute; John Cooper, also of AEI and co-author of The Corporation: A Theological Inquiry; and Robert Benne, author of The Ethics of Democratic Capitalism.

The fee to attend these forums is a modest $5 ($10 extra if you wish to partake of the luncheon).

For more information contact Walter Block at the Fraser Institute, 688-0221.