church-ridden

church-ridden

English

Etymology

church +‎ -ridden

Adjective

church-ridden (comparative more church-ridden, superlative most church-ridden)

1. Dominated by the church or churches.
   • 1748, Anonymous, The State Preferable to the Church, London: M. Cooper, p. 49,

     […] 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.

   • 1865, “Throned upon Thorns,” All the Year Round edited by Charles Dickens, Number 330, 19 August, 1865, p. 83,

     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.

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

     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.

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

     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.