christianity, anthropologyI always told myself the church was born out of the need to control the masses, and the church made a great job of controlling [and persecuting], the masses.
The question is then: where does the church come from? How was it formed, when, by who, and for what purpose, originally?
First, people are naturally predisposed to being superstitious. In the ancestral environment, one would need to detect intelligent agents (e.g. human enemies and predators). Obviously, those who were overly suspicious have had better chances of survival. As this has been hardwired into our brains by natural selection, people tend to “perceive” intelligent agents (i.e. deities, witches, wizards, spirits) behind natural phenomena (lightning, droughts, whatever).
Second, when a collective religious memory is formed for reasons described above, it can either become confined to a relatively small area (example: tribal beliefs in some African tribes) or start spreading. In the first case, anthropologists observe no official religious organizations (no churches). In the second case, churches do appear. The reason behind this is that any widespread religious belief has to compete with constantly emerging local mythologies while preserving itself intact, and the natural human way to cope with competing service providers would be establishing an organization whose officials would provide the same religious services (e.g. baptism, confession, paid prayer) in pretty much the same ways all over the region. A religious institution of that kind is a church.
The book Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer (who is an anthropologist) provides a more detailed and coherent description of this process.
Intelligent Agency is a perfect explanation for superstition as Vitaly said. Add 'Confirmation Bias' to Vitaly's answer and you end up a little closer to religion: we prayed for him to be cured and he was cured. Add civilization, agriculture, free time and societal striation that comes from living in cities and you end up with a church.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.