In Huppert's "After the Black Death" the author describes the town of Sennely, using it as a model ordinary Early Modern society. I thought it was surprising that the people of Sennely were not as devoutly Christian as I had thought most in Early Modern Europe would be at the time.
He notes that "religion played a large part in the lives of the peasants, but it was a religion of their own, designed to satisfy local needs." I was surprised to find that universal Christiandom was not as conservative as some of the sects that we have now in the US.
I think there is a modern misconception that pre-modern life was somehow pure and untouched by the evils that plague societies today. And this is clearly not the case. Religion has a purpose according to most sociologists and that is to unite a society enough so it can function and have something of which to base its rules. But clearly, there is no "pure" form of religion because it was always molded into whatever the religious or even secular leaders needed people to believe or do at the time.
In short, this has mostly affirmed my beliefs as an atheist: religion is mostly just rules on how to not be a terrible person, clouded in a bunch of bullshit.
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