I was recently reading a book on Spanish treatment of Indians during the 1500's. Now during this time period you had widespread abuse of the natives by Spanish landowners now I understand King Charles attempted to institute reforms but many Spanish resisted it outright or rebelled. Now if this was an absolute monarchy at the time in Spain and the King was understood as Divinely appointed by God. So to rebel against that AND be religious just seems inconceivable. Not to mention the whole lust for gold and rape thing that was going on back then. I'm interested to hear what you guys think.
It depends on what you mean by "religious". Before I provide some historical context, I'd submit to you a question: are you always one hundred percent consistent in your beliefs? Do you believe in some things but find yourself slipping, not committing to those beliefs, or even sometimes questioning them? Your question is very intelligent because it doesn't treat historical actors of the past with the sort of condescension we've come to expect from most people who think about history.'
Now, to answer your question. I think it is safe to say that as a general spiritual framework, "religion" was more prevalent in the past, especially in the early modern period that you're referring to. It would be very difficult to find someone who outright rejected a conception of God- given the state of scientific knowledge, there was a limit to how people could conceive of the world.
HOWEVER, belief in a "God" is a pretty vague framework and we see a lot of diversity in terms of how people conceived of the universe. If we take the example of Christianity, elites imposed a particular version of religion on the populace that served to legitimize their rule. But if we contrast elite spirituality with the spirituality of the peasants, for example, we find that there was quite a lot of diversity. In Russia, for example, peasants, despite having adopted Christianity*, still retained many of their pagan practices, believed in a variety of spirits, and practiced "magic" rituals, all of which were considered heretical practices. Ultimately, human beings impose and negotiate their beliefs upon the ideologies they embrace. Ideology is a way of making sense of the world, but part of what attracts a person to an ideology is the ways in which it is consistent with already held beliefs. Therefore, any other aspect of ideology that doesn't fit with their mental framework will be removed. This is how it is possible for us to have Southern American slavemasters and Northern American abolitionists both claim that their religion justifies completely opposite views.
The Bible is a text. People do what they want with it.
*Interestingly enough, the Russian word for "peasant" translates literally as "Christian"