church-ridden

comparative more church-ridden · superlative most church-ridden

1. Dominated by the church or churches.

   And now he told the members of Local Leesville what he thought of those tea-party revolutionists who pandered to the respectability of a church-ridden community.

   1919, Upton Sinclair, Jimmie Higgins, Pasadena, Chapter III, Part II, p. 27

   3 more examples

   […] to a Nation of Papists, as the whole People then were, and proposed to remain such, it was thought necessary to procure the further Security of a Dispensation from the See of Rome, without which it might be possible, for Ecclesiasticks, in the Reign of some future Church-ridden Prince, to resume their Possessions without refunding the Purchase Money.

   1748, anonymous author, The State Preferable to the Church, London: M. Cooper, page 49

   It was a law introduced by Juarez, and named after him, by which the equal rights of all citizens was established. But a stout battle followed, in which, for reasons we have seen, the parish priests were on the side of the people, and the higher dignitaries of the church—in a land long church-ridden and still very superstitious—were the heads of the antagonism.

   1865 August 19, “Throned upon Thorns”, in Charles Dickens, editor, All the Year Round, number 330, page 83

   There was actually no question of treason to the tsar, nor could be in a front which included the Church-ridden peasants; the common enemy was Kaftyrev and his local administration only.

   1943, G. D. R. Phillips, “Colonisation: Russo-Buryat Revolt”, in Dawn in Siberia: The Mongols of Lake Baikal, London: Frederick Muller, page 90