Seamus Milne on the progressive role religion can play

Journalist Seamus Milne highlights the scope for "stronger alliances between the secular left and religious progressives against poverty, capitalism and war". "[Previously] organised religion stood with the established order, preaching social deference to the powers that be and leaving hope of justice to the hereafter. But as religion has declined in Europe and elsewhere and capitalism has eroded the ties binding religious institutions to ruling elites, that has become ever less true. … Religion cannot but now find itself in conflict with the unfettered rule of money - a capitalism that seeks to dominate exactly the social and personal arena which religion has always regarded as its own preserve. And as it becomes less useful as an ideological prop for power, religion's more radical and anti-establishment strains have become stronger. That is the context in which, for example, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela declares Jesus as the first socialist… .”

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