This paper analyzes the conditions under which religion exerts pluralism- and democracy-inhibiting effects and thereby acquires dangerous political implications. I argue that this occurs when religion idealizes a premodern condition—an "invention of the lost" (Eva Illouz)—and advances absolute normative claims grounded in this imagined past. The argument presupposes a reflective yet affirmative concept of Enlightenment. While critical perspectives (Horkheimer/Adorno, Spivak) have revealed its exclusions, I follow Michel Foucault in understanding Enlightenment as an ongoing, self-critical practice rather than a closed historical epoch. Corine Pelluchon extends this emancipatory impulse beyond its original Western and male framework. Enlightenment thus becomes a dynamic project capable of revising its own limits. Drawing on Rahel Jaeggi, I interpret progress as problem-solving and learning through crises. This allows a distinction between adequate and regressive responses to modernity. Religion becomes politically problematic when it reacts regressively—by denying its pluralized and individualized status in modern societies and by restoring authoritarian claims insulated from critique. Such dynamics are visible in U.S. evangelical interpretations of Donald Trump as a new Cyrus, which presuppose an absolute understanding of revelation. At the same time, following Benedict Anderson, the erosion of religious meaning can foster national constructions of meaning, as in Fichte's interpretation of the Reformation or Emanuel Hirsch's theology of the people. In ethnically charged appropriations such as J. D. Vance's appeal to Augustine's ordo amoris, religious claims intertwine with regressive strategies of coping with modernity. A reflective, emancipatory concept of Enlightenment can help preserve religion's productive role in pluralistic societies and counteract its political instrumentalization.