ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the resources that religious Utopianism, especially Christian visions of the reign of Cod, might offer to the project of reclaiming and revising a politically effective left Utopianism. It looks both at various efforts to revise and reclaim Utopian theory and imagery by left analysts today and at the historical experiences of a particular Utopian movement, the Catholic peasant left in Central America. The chapter critiques the unacknowledged Utopianism of self-proclaimed "realists" on the right. Socialists have spent considerable time in the past decade or so debating the relevance of Utopianism for our thinking and our movements. The dominant ideology among the Salvadorans celebrating peace in the plaza was progressive Catholicism, which emerged in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and the Latin American Bishops' 1968 conference in Medellin, Colombia. Progressive Catholicism represents a uniquely Latin American intertwining of Christian and socialist visions of a better world.
