[Always *]

I think it depends on who you talk to and how you view it. Generally speaking, the answer might be yes, because control does not have to be an oppressive thing like Coexist said. "Controlling" something can be taken as a means of "keeping control and order", like how a parent controls a household or a teacher controls a classroom--typically NOT oppressive but maintains order, community and provides support. This is contrary to exerting a negative oppressive control like a totalitarians rule over a country or like the rule of an abusive parent.

There are a few ways to view the reason for the creation of religion
1 being a means to provide answers in the universe
2 being a means to provide bonds in a community (ex. they all have jobs and families of their own but unite over their religious belief and need for answers) and
3 a means of creating order and law in the world.

Thousands of years ago, or even just simply hundreds of years ago, people weren't necessarily following the law of a king or other ruler that they knew nothing about. They followed the laws and rules implied by priests, priestesses, shamans etc. People would try to please their god or were "God fearing people" etc. (apply applicable term to appropriate religion). Their beliefs helped to determine their actions for better or worse--if you believed God would smite you for being gay then you can probably successfully assume that a lot of people might struggle with those feelings towards the same gender and thus Christianity succeeded in controlling that persons behaviour.

But is religion necessarily controlling beyond a persons choice to follow the laws and rules of that religion? Yes and no.

Religion in itself is a choice, it's an empty thing that people choose to follow, so no, it's not controlling like that. People typically choose to follow it. It's why loads of Christians become more open to things like homosexuality because they can turn around and say "no, I don't think this is point is something I can get on board with", people can redefine the lines of their religion, thus allowing them to follow the main fundamentals of Christianity (lets say), and say you know, there's a god, killing, stealing and being unfaithful is bad, love your god, love everyone else, don't judge blah blah blah... So I think in this way religion isn't a controlling thing. It gives answers to the universe, it allows people to bond but you've removed the factors where it's controlling (and not in a god way) because people are able to assert a certain amount of control over what they're willing to accept as right wrong and what they're expected to do. But you still have to follow the rules of society, you can't just run around behaving like a lawless brigand, order is necessary in society and someone has to enforce those laws (thus the ones who have the control). But nowadays that's usually government, so, for example, modern cultures might have religions present (scratch that *will have* religions present) but generally it's governments that people are expected to obey too, so that's why I think people have X amounts of control over what they do, they have governments, they have religions, cultures, families and friends.... But overall people make their choices, and that does the trick. People have the choice to stop adhering to a religion (and become non-religious, atheist or otherwise), they have a choice to even say "this law in this religion is wrong, so I'm disregarding it but will otherwise obey" etc. etc.

But at the same time religion can be extremely oppressive and controlling. Think of the residential schools that aboriginal children were sent to where priests and nuns abused the children there for years and insisted that they assimilate into "white" culture and forced them to stop speaking their languages, stop practicing their customs and instead replaced it with meanial education intended to set them up to low level jobs in society and made them become Christians. Yes, the government is largely to blame here, and no Christianity (and Catholics) won't always present like this BUT it did happen whether y'all like it or not AND the Catholic church supported it and had their priests and nuns go there and permitted them to abuse these kids (and I think the Protestant church too, but it was to a much lesser extent and I mostly know about Catholics though). I know it sucks for people who don't want to think people they wanted to trust in their religion ever took part in such atrocious things, but it happened, hey, I'm descended from the "settlers" (AKA, French/English people for the most part) who orchestrated all that shit in North America with the Indians too and that sucks for me too knowing how much my ancestors liked being controlling. But you have to remember that not all white people are scary, evil oppressors just like not all Christians are that way. It happened in South America, African and Asia too, all around the world people have used their religious beliefs to justify horrors that they've partaken in or used religious beliefs in the "reasons" like Cortez actually writing stuff saying that it was divinely allowed for him to go to what he did in South America, he compared himself to Moses and believed that treating the locals was totally justified..... It goes on... And on... And on....

But do I think that religion was created for this sole purpose of abusive control? No. Do I think religion was created to oppress people? No.... I think religion exists for fairly valid reasons much like why governments exist and why we grow up with our families and why people seek answers in science and it's why we need friends and so on. A send of community, answers to the worlds mysteries and law/order are fairly important. Law and order DOES maintain a sense of control to it... But the "good kind" of control does not exert it in the way that it takes away a persons right to choose, have free will, and have dignity etc.