The Agent of the Powerless

After we have been learning, for a few weeks now, about how religion can be used to aid the powerful, we have transitioned into learning about how it helps the powerless. An example of how it helped the powerful were how Pope Urban said that everyone had to fight in order to be accepted in the religious community and to go to heaven. He basically said that is people fight in the Crusade then all of there sins will be canceled out and they will have an automatic ticket to heaven. He used his power to get the word out about this and he used religion as the platform for a political issue. People such as Martin Luther King Jr., people who were not very powerful, used religion to help them, hence "religion as an agent to the powerless." He used religion as his platform as well but he was also a pastor at a baptist church so that helped to get the word out about his intentions on civil rights. 
Now, how did religion shift from being an agent to the powerful to being an agent to the powerless? Well, it all started with Martin Luther, the man who started the protestant church. They were the rebels against the Catholic Church. 
"In your opinion, does religion have an inherent “goodness” or “badness” or is it simply a medium that can be manipulated in every way?"
To answer this question in short, badness. I am Christian but kind of not. I celebrate Christmas but that is because Jesus was a good person who did pretty amazing things and also I like getting presents. But really, like I have said maybe ten thousand times before, religion is used as an excuse to do things. Like terrorists, who don't like Americans, bombed New York and said that they were doing it for religious reasons, or even just saying you can't attend something because of "religious purposes" I have heard that one plenty of times. Put plainly, religion is just used to keep and/or gain power. I don't want to go into an entire rant about this because I could write for hours but seriously, back to the question at hand. I could see religion as a medium that can be manipulated because not all people use religion to gain power or as an excuse for certain things. Some people use it to give themselves hope and reason to live life with a positive attitude and I would never want to argue that that is not true. I just think that if religion is "put into the wrong hands" then it can be used for bad. So I guess that is just religion being manipulated.