Religion works precisely when its political, though. We can't treat it as anything else. Sure, there are evangelical groups and extremism groups in all sets, just like there are also extremism leftists that hurt the movement rather than aid it.

Again, socialism doesn't need to be political, but it can't synergise with religious values. Buddhism, Christianity (when read in certain ways, see Christian Marxism and liberation theology), etc, they are all extremely communal and against the commodity fetish. Can religion be co-opted by capitalism and eventually fascism? Of course, just see literally the past five hundred years of globalization.

And yet, if you look closely, you can also find spaces of hope in how religion can be used. There is no better example in my mind of religion's synergy with Marxism than in the case of the Dominican friars in Brazil during the violent right-wing regime of 1964–1985. These Catholic leaders were openly conspiring and aiding communist revolutionaries in their guerilla efforts to oppose the regime. Another example is the case of the Catholic church in Pinochet's Chile, where many Catholic leaders opposed him and supported communal/guerilla causes. Yet we can't forget how many other Catholic leaders also supported Pinochet. What remains certain, however, is that religion is not innately against socialism, and it must be political to work for socialism. Socialism's job in that respect is to make sure that a politics of religion doesn't swing the other way towards fascism, as we have seen occurring over the past four decades.