Today, a lot of countries have rural populations that are socially conservative and religious contrasted with a relatively secular minded urban population. For example Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. The conservative populace living in villages or small towns pushes back against secularism and liberal thought from prevailing especially if they outnumber the people living in large, cosmopolitan cities.
I'm assuming that the population in Western Europe during the period from 1500-1800 was also comprised of people living mostly in rural areas. Therefore were there similar problems of rural pushback against urban secularism and decreased religiosity as in the present day?
Did the proliferation of books help? Were the books coming off the newly invented printing press, making their way to the small towns and villages?
Or were the demographics such that maybe the rural population wasn't as large a majority?
Did the people in the small villages even realise the changes that were occurring and and how the culture was changing towards rationalism and liberalism and away from superstition and religion?
Were there any rabble rousing priests ala today's village Mullahs who sensed the move away from religion and try to stop it?
Given that the Renaissance saw the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch Craze, Puritanism in England, the Counter Reformation, the Thirty Years War and the Papal States actively participating in geopolitics, can you maybe be a little more specific where exactly there was such a big amount of secularism?
Maybe you rather meant "The Enlightenment" and not "The Renaissance"?
(For clarity's sake: The Spanish Inquisition's popular image is of course mostly Protestant propaganda, but neither was it particularly "secular". Similarly, while the 30 Years War was not exclusively religious, it certainly had important religious elements)