For the last 150 years there has been a conflict between secularism and religion. The progressive left in particular were convinced religion left to itself would wither on the vine and ultimately, sometimes speedily, die out.
That didn’t stop Marxist regimes from trying to hurry the process along with the aid of state persecution, however. But that might have been a sign of their impatience as well as implacable hostility.
The outcome has been in fact a substantially different one. For example, in 1989 there was a minuscule number of Christians in the Soviet Union after nearly a century of propaganda, pressure and oppression. But by 2008 Pew research suggested that 72 per cent had adopted the Christian faith.
