Religious and Secular Authority the Essay

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Although religious and secular authority have been in conflict practically since religion was first formalized into specific institutions and centers of power, the evolution of religious authority which occurred after 1500 set the stage for the conflicts of the contemporary world by distributing religious authority to the religious populace, rather than a small group of priests and leaders. By imbuing each individual member of any given religion (but mostly Christianity) with the supposed blessing and authority of a god, religion actually increased its influence exponentially precisely by making that influence appear diminished.

When religious authority was centered in the hands of a relatively small priesthood, it could be easily attacked and confronted because there was a single target of criticism.

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However, when religious authority was distributed among the faithful as a result of the Catholic Church's split and the rise of Enlightenment ideas, confronting or challenging religious authority became an almost impossible task, because it was distributed among each individual, individuals who could come together to assert their influence (while voting, for example) but then recede quietly. Secular authority, on the other hand, rapidly became centered in government, and while this granted substantial influence to that authority, this could not compare to the influence generated by legions of faithful followers, who themselves were capable of adopting the appearance of secular argument in order to further their religious aims.

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