UTC Most Marxists and many progresssives give little praise and have less respect to religious communities and religious sensibilities. There are many good reasons to so cut oneself off from both. Religious teachings often encourage one to turn away from the present 'evils' of a society and, at the same time, reproduce those evils by lesson and by deed. Society, symbolic interaction, schools, professors and socialists alike are impossible without the basic social psychological processes embedded in and emerging out of religious sensibilities these past 400,000 years or more. A University requires belief by faculty and students alike that the missions of the school will be fulfilled in both the prophecy and the realization of that prophecy.
Students trust their professors even beyond reasonable doubt.
Faith, hope, trust, belief and transcendent joy are not to be found in either modern science nor in the nihilistic postmodernism which doubts all, criticizes all, minimizes all and discards all standards of belief. The second is to transform Marxist Theory. My own contributions center around non-linear social dynamics and a much larger postmodern sensibility that is found in Marx, as well as an effort to reconceptualize class struggle and class enemy in a globalized political economy. These efforts are scattered around in the Red Feather website. The third goal I have taken, inspired by my good friends Richard Quinney and Stan Saxton, is to transform the sociology of religion in include and encompass postmodern dimensions in both content and teaching.