This is the materialist critique of religion. It is an impediment to progress not because it is “backward” or conservative, but because people have to give up their agency in the process.

However it should be noted that with the rise of “modernity” in Europe, with the idea that “man makes his own history”, the interpretation of Christianity that prevailed at the time, was one in which the message the message of Christ was one that encourages human beings to the actors of their own history. That is how Christianity and modernity in Europe could exist at the same time, the religion of Christianity was re-interpreted and adapted to the political and social needs of the time in the region.

…The message of Christ may, then, be interpreted as a summons to human beings to be the actors of their own history. If they act properly, that is, if they let themselves be inspired by the moral values which he enacted in his life and death, they will come closer to God in whose image they have been created. This is the interpretation that eventually prevailed and has given to modern Christianity its specific features based on a reading of the Gospels that enables us to imagine the future as the encounter between history as made by human beings and divine intervention. The very idea of the end of time, as brought about by an intervention from outside history, has vanished.

The break extends to the whole area that was until then under the sway of the holy law. Undoubtedly, Christ takes care to proclaim that he has not come to this earth to upset the Law (of the Jews). This is in accordance with his core message: he has not come to replace ancient laws by better ones. It is up to human beings to call these laws into question. Christ himself sets an example by attacking one of the harshest and most formal criminal laws, i.e., the stoning of adulterous wives. When he says “those who have never sinned should throw the first stone,” he opens the door to debate. What if this law was not just, what if its only purpose was to hide the hypocrisy of the real sinners? In fact, Christians are going to give up Jewish laws and rituals: circumcision disappears and the rules of personal law are diversified, insofar as the expansion of Christianity outside of the Jewish world proper adapts itself to different laws and statutes. A Christian law, which anyway does not exist, is not substituted for the latter. Also, alimentary prohibitions lose their power.

• Samir Amin, Eurocentrism Second Edition, pages 42-43

It actually incredible how many pastors, especially modern day protestant evangelical church pastors, do not understand this concept and retreat back into dogmatic beliefs. Literally going back to Middle Age interpretations of Christianity.