The parish made Christianity a piece of civic infrastructure rather than a voluntary society: a building, a defined patch of ground, a list of households, and a cleric responsible for everyone inside the boundary whether they attended or not. Baptisms, marriages and burials were registered there, which is why parish records are the backbone of European genealogy and demographic history. That system still legally exists in England, where every resident has a right to be married in their parish church. Almost everywhere else, and increasingly there, people choose a congregation instead — which changes the incentives completely, since a congregation you can leave must be attractive in a way a parish you were born into did not. Lay councils control the money and the building in most denominations, and the relationship between a pastor and that council is where most congregational conflict actually happens.