Religion In The 18th Century

Religion and the Churches
In the eighteenth century, many people believed that society could not function properly without religion, even though the thought of the time was heavily based off of antireligion. The popular and institutional religion differed greatly in the eighteenth century. Churches still remained to be a big part of everyday life. Parish church kept records of births, deaths, and marriages, provided charity for the poor, supervised whatever primary education there was; and cared for orphans. Catholic and protestant churches were conservative institutions that upheld society’s hierarchical structure, privileged classes and traditions. Protestant religions were considered to be more conservative the wealthy people ran them,

they controlled the religion and were based off of old tradition. They were very intune with the government, there was not conflict. The Catholic church remained hierarchically structured, and received large revenues from their landed estates. Governments of multiple of the Catholic states were seeking a larger authority over the churches. The popular religion created a new religion, of methodism. Religion was difficult to measure, it was hard to tell who went to church regularly, versus if people just attended Mass on Easter Sunday. Another major thing of popular religion was the Pietism, as people began a deeper devotion to god. A multitude of new Religions and more acceptance was becoming apparent in the eighteenth century.
They believed that people could go to explore their own ideology, because people are constantly challenging beliefs. Some tolerations did not make advances though, the Jews remained despised by a multitude of other religions. It became so bad that pogroms started, where whole Jewish communities were stolen from and massacred.