In my country it wasn't until the late 19th century that someone had the balls to stop going to church on Sunday. It was a huge scandal at the time but it all worked out in the end.

Humans have always done mass surveillance on eachother. You don't need technology for that.

At no point in time before this era was it possible for a random bureaucrat to have a reasonably comprehensive list of everyone in a country who attended church yesterday.

Scale matters.