Religious utopianism supplies equality and freedom demands to oppressed strata

Evidence

It affirms, in fact, that mankind has the same “nature”, that man in general exists, in so far as created by God, son of God, therefore brother of other men, equal to other men, and free amongst and as other men; and that he can conceive of himself as such, mirrored in God, who is the “self-consciousness” of humanity; but it also affirms that all this is not of this world, but of another (the Utopia). Thus do ideas of equality, fraternity and liberty ferment among men, among those strata of mankind who do not see themselves as equals nor as brothers of other men, nor as free in relation to them. Thus it has come about that in every radical stirring of the multitude, in one way or another, with particular forms and particular ideologies, these demands have always been raised. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1440

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why universalizing religious claims can supply emancipatory vocabularies — relevant to how Islamophobic discourse reacts to universalist rhetoric. — connects to: Religious claims anchor constitutional inequality and block democratic equality. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 565; Bloch’s early social utopia subordinated the church to socialism while retaining it