Abstract

CASANOVA: In the “Foreword” to your book Religion and Social Conflicts, Luis Ogade begins with a series of texts from the Latin American Anticommunist Federation, the Rockefeller Report, the Rand Study for the State Department and the like denouncing the Church as “subversive” and “revolutionary. “Hepoints out that the Right has begun to appreciate the revolutionary and subversive potential of religion, while the Left seems to continue the old stereotypes, such as religion being “the opium of the people,” or a traditional residuum likely to disappear with the advance of science and modernity. Why do you think the Left has not been able to appreciate the alleged subversive and revolutionary potential of religion?