Essentially what happened is the Roman Empire borrowed/adopted Christianity from their subjects in the middle east in 380AD because of Constantine IMO. He had a vision and becomes a patron of one particular branch of Christianity that includes both the Old and New Testament as part of it's cannon. This includes a governmental model that Constantine uses to consolidate his secular power and he basically gives the church federal funding. Then he targets all the other Christian ideologies and eliminates them.
There was a vision of a renewed Rome. There was no separation of Church and State. You can decide for yourself what the motivation or goals were.
The Romans made Christianity their religion. In my opinion they molded it to fit their needs. They built up the Catholic Church and after the Roman's power vanished the Catholic Church remained as really the only force in Europe through the middle ages. It became the dominate religion in Europe and thus became the dominate religion in the West.
In 1517 (1,137 years later) Martin Luther began by criticizing the sale of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the Bible.
Now they surely didn't lie about anything or have any motivation, their own interpretation, etc.. Right? It's all right there written by the hand of God right?
501 Years later and 242 years after we won our independence and declared the Separation of Church and State. Now a single church can operate on it's own accord. So instead of being governed from a central source now you have essentially self-governance.
In my opinion what you are complaining about... this is what "Church" has always been designed for. The difference being you are seeing the politics and cult like aspects of an individual church at the local level.... instead of at the Vatican or by their direction. Nobody is really giving your local church orders. Thus it can take on it's own form and function socially, politically, etc.
I've got no issues with faith, however I too am cautious about the real ideology behind organized religion.
