There was a period of time in which the Church controlled and managed almost every cultural aspect of life: artists were judged and admonished for their lack of religious themes or for too much vulgarity, science was dismissed for contradictions with orthodoxy, politicians were forced to confess their alignment with ideals relegated with the Church, religious leaders gained prestige for connections to political and industrial leaders, writers and thinkers who deviated from accepted doctrines where admonished as heretics, homosexuals and those of different religions were deemed an abomination, and Church leadership believed they had indeed understood the Holy Scriptures to such a degree that they and those who agreed with them alone were the bearers of the truth handed down by God.

The sentence above applies just as much to the relationship the Church had to culture at the time of the Reformation as it does to the Christianity alive and growing in the US today.