The Christian religion had begun as spiritual protests against the conditions of life, wherein lower classes believed that they were supernaturally favoured over the richer ruling classes. However, it had deteriorated from its original goals into a kind of false consolation for people who accepted their subjection. This degeneration was viewed negatively in the later Marxist–Leninist tradition, as a kind of perversion of the original noble goals of religion by the social and cultural elite.