J.B. Shurk – For millennia, monarchs ruled by some form of divine right. If not asserting god-like powers, they claimed to be acting as God’s emissaries here on Earth. You can imagine the effect this had on devout peoples of any faith.
How could the great unwashed masses dare question any royal’s divinely inspired orders? This paradigm kept government authorities towering over those they ruled.
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution crashed through the walls of absolute monarchies and reoriented political systems on the foundations of natural law, religious toleration, constitutional government, and individual liberty.