history of religion in politics spanning from the 14th century until now.

Essay by CaptiancuddlesHigh School, 12th gradeB+, December 2012

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Religion's End?

Western society has always had a large relationship between religion and politics, but is this starting to change? Is religion starting to lose its impact on western civilization? Religion's death in western society's politics is drawing closer to its eminent death. There was a time when the church ruled and everyone was catholic and listened to the priests every words. When the paper press was created that is when books became more accessible and more people learned how to read, this lead to people to interpret the bible in their own ways skewing the beliefs of the general public which brought the separation of Catholicism which weakened the church's power. Now today more and more people are turning from religion, becoming more skeptical, and the church now has no say in what is decided in today's politics.

In the 14th and part of the 15th century the Roman Catholic Church had lots of power.

The church was kept in power by kings who were religious themselves and opposition to the church and Catholicism in general was not tolerated and could lead to horrendous punishments and even execution. The church had a large influence on laws made and many laws were actually religiously based. In this time some popes were even able to achieve greater power than the king. Proof of the church's influence on the people the priests at one point even started getting the people to pay them for acceptance into heaven and skip purgatory; these were called indulgences and actually were a part of what led to the church's decline of power.

The general public was very religious and the only people who had access to the bible (or books in general) were the rich and the church. The church used their priests to interpret and...