The biggest mistake of the old Soviet Union- under CULTURE- was declaring THEIR state " officially atheist ". Democratic socialists today worthy of the name try to build bridges to the world's Christians , to FAITH celebrating Catholics and Protestants , indeed to ALL the world's religious people .
Oddly enough the " liberal " Democrat Party has been poisoned by a decidedly STALINIST contempt for religion. In the USA since when should " separation of church and state " mean in practice official state hostility to religion as if it were a politically incorrect ideological plague as it is viewed in China ?
And just COMMON SENSE politics : how can militant atheism ( as expressed in ex-Trotskyist , New Atheist Christopher Hitchens' nasty book " God is Not Great - how religion poisons everything " ) how can this militant atheism ever have MASS APPEAL ?
Try establishing some crackpot " dictatorship of the proletariat " without the masses. The religious instincts go deep . Consult the Catholic Saint Augustine . China is warned by the fate of Russia in 1991 . The Russian Orthodox Church is having a revival .