All these activities resulted in the formation of a great...

All these activities resulted in the formation of a great movement against the Pope which gave impetus to the Renaissance. One of the most major effects of the Renaissance which was also advocated by some church leaders and priests was condemning the Catholic Church’s conduct and its interference in the matters related to the society such as political affairs.

It was claimed that what the Catholic Church had preached and practiced until then was deviant from the teachings of Christianity and that true Christianity had nothing to do with government and political activities, and it is only concerned with strengthening man’s relationship with God inside the church. Therefore, all the misfortunes, deprivations and backwardness of Europe throughout those centuries were attributed to the Church and its teachings, and so it must be expelled from the scene.

The main subjects of the Church were on God, the heaven and celestial kingdom. The Europeans decided to use other teachings and slogans in lieu of those teachings which brought about the society’s misfortunes, replacing man with God, earth with heaven, and terrestrial life with celestial kingdom. In this way, the slogan of “God, heaven and celestial kingdom” gave way to another three-pronged catchphrase, i.e.

“man, earth and terrestrial life” and Westerners separated religious questions from the serious issues of life, assuming that life affairs are worldly matters and must be solved on earth instead of resorting to God in the celestial world for solution. This trend became known as “secularism,” i.e. this world and earthly life.

It was on this basis that it was supposed that if there are God and religion, those who believe in them, they and their God know; they must not be concerned with social matters. The place of religion is in the church and temple; there, you may cry, supplicate and repent as much as you want, but once you step out of the church and be in the social scenes and face serious life affairs, you will have nothing to do with religion. Religion has a specific domain and politics has another.

Politics means management of social affairs while religion is concerned with the relationship between man and God. In this way, the relationship between religion and politics in Europe and Christianity was severed, and a demarcation line was drawn between the two so that personal matters were placed at one side and social affairs at another.