In some places and some times, the answer to this question is yes. It is evident to the whole world that is still reeling from shock from the brutal deaths of innocent people in Iran for simply raising their voices against a theocratic regime that has worked for so long to suppress them. And in the majority of societies throughout history, where rulers were either made into gods or endowed by their gods with divine authority, allowing them to do pretty much whatever they liked and woe to anyone who had the chuztpah to incite his, and occassionally her, displeasure. If their authority was challenged, it was done violently.
But for us to hold religion as a whole as being responsible for government oppression, rather than looking at particular cases, is to fail to take into account the role of humans. We don't need religion as a tool for oppression; there are plenty of other weapons to be used. Political ideology was used to justify the oppression and murder of millions of people in the last century alone. It is also to take for granted our own free, democratic societies and the rights they uphold by forgetting just how they came into being and how much work went into building them, for they are not our default state.
After all, for most of human history, people didn't think in terms of concepts like that of the individual and of rights and freedoms and equality under the law. A person was thought of as a member of a people, a tribe, and a clan, not an individual. He had a certain status in society and a set of obligations that went along with that status. The rules might be much less complicated and the hierarchies less rigid in some societies, but it was mainly due to the fact that those societies were themselves simple, like a band of 100 hunter-gatherers. Our modern ideas would have been foreign to all of these people.
To know this, then, is to know just how much Judaism, which taught that all people were fallen and thus none all powerful or all wise, stood out for its time. Hebrew rulers didn't shy from acknowledging their weaknesses, and the people held rulers accountable to God; the Old Testament is full of skepticism towards earthly power. Christianity was even more radical. Christ was expected to be a political messiah, but His ministry was anything but political, focusing instead on inner change. Moreover, He taught that God's love and favour were not restricted to one tribe or people, but extended to everyone. After His death, identity as a follower of Christ was more important than identity as a member of a group. The idea laid out in Genesis that humankind was made in the God's Image was further developed so that everyone, from emperor to slave, had eternal worth. Respect for authority was preached by Jesus Himself, but because Him rulers could destroy only the body and not the soul, and so His followers were given tremendous inner freedom.
Humans being the stubborn and flawed creatures we are, these ideas did not effect societal transformation overnight; it took centuries, and it would take a whole book to document how it happened, but in part 3 I'll go over some of the highlights.
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