Communist states functioned as a secular religion with its own church

Evidence

In the secular state, which officially has no religion at all, and in which there is no involvement of the state in religion and no involvement of religion in the state, Judaism theoretically has the same status of any other religion. There are not many secular states of that type in the world. Most of the countries of Western Europe have a state church, though at the present time this is not very meaningful. The communist states in Eastern Europe were in principle secular, but in reality their secularism had little effect. They were atheists, but not godless. They had no theology, but they did have a creed. They had no religion, but they certainly had a church, complete with scriptures and dogmas, prelates and hierarchs, orthodoxy, heresies and, above all, an inquisition. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 330

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to discussions of how political ideologies take on religious structures — parallels with secular-religion scholarship and the general phenomenon of functional religions. — connects to: Polish communists tacitly tolerated members practicing religion and opposing the party — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 259; Bloch’s early social utopia subordinated the church to socialism while retaining it
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: Lewis’s claim that communist states ‘had a church, complete with scriptures and dogmas… and an inquisition’ — is this descriptive hyperbole or a productive analytic frame?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 330