Dictionary

church-ridden en · ADJ

Etymology

From church + -ridden.

Meanings

1. Dominated by the church or churches.
   • 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:
   • […] 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:
   • 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:

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