How has religion been affected by secularism and utopian ideals?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: Most of the really powerful utopian visions of the twentieth century were secular—irreligious, even antireligious. Religion had to face serious challenges and sometimes ferocious persecution from hostile political ideologies. Utopians who put their faith in the state often did so in conscious revulsion from religious establishments, which had clearly failed, after what seemed a long enough period of trying, to enhance virtue or spread welfare or justice. Communists usually regarded atheism as part of their own creed and dismissed religion as "the opiate of the masses." Nazis wanted to sweep away the church, which they saw as an enfeebling influence that weakened the nation's martial virtues. Social planning relied for its appeal on a scientistic notion: that human agency alone could change societies like chemicals in a lab, and achieve predictable results, with no need for appeals to Providence or to God's grace. The world—from all these perspectives—would be better off without religion, which had caused wars, retarded science, and stifled reason with dogma. Religion was one of the first casualties of the skepticism that was a major twentieth-century theme.