Was Christianity started to control the masses and dictate poltical agendas

[Anomalocaris]

I have always felt this to be true. I do know that this is a very common theme I have heard and read as well. That religion was created to control people and the proper way to do that was to use the deterrents of hell and a vengeful God. I do know the Catholic church really grasped onto this. For instance, they did not allow regular people to read the bible; only priests could. Was this to keep out all the stuff they did not want the masses to see? What are your thoughts?

I do not think Christian and Jewish  priests deliberately concocted myths to control people. I do think it made it easier to do so.

I think even the very earliest myths of the Paleolithic, the most distant discernible ancestors of the earliest glimmer of Judaism and Christianity, was deliberately concocted to enable the fraud to overall the gullible and thus better control the gullible in some way. From that time onwards very few myth were concocted or perpetrated without an eye on its efficacy in enhancing control of other people.