The Wenelians know that new-fangled religions and moving away from the old ways will get you damned. They know this with the same sort of bred-in-the-bone conviction that the Heortlings have with regard to fearing dragons. The god learners had a net effect on Maniria akin to the black death, or perhaps closer to what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia.

First land already endured the goddess switch, which nobody knows about conciously but everyone knows that bad magic did something to their most critical goddess--this is akin to "mom has cancer and somehow it is the fault of that factory over there." It does not much matter what the benefits of the factory are, at a very visceral level you hate it.

The with the collapse of the god learners huge numbers of people, including very high proportions of educated people and leaders, were killed. The existing society collapsed at this point, between loss of key people, loss of ways of doing things, loss of knowledge, and loss of leadership. Further, nobody knew exactly what would bring in the gift bringers. To do anything different was potentially death for you and your entire family, possibly your entire community. Anybody who was even suspected of maybe knowing 'those things' was shunned, driven away, or killed. In this process they got rid of the light bringer cults and most other foreign magic too.

Then the neighboring land, Slontos, was totally destroyed and mostly sunk. The coast of Wenelia also sank. Old cities, including most of the strongest cultural centres were destroyed in that sinking. A wave of refugees surged through the land, not always well received. Those who took them in were often unable to support them, those that did not were often attacked by them.

The net result was massive depopulation, loss of leadership and coherence, high levels of distrust of all things new or foreign. If you had a child that you knew was going to try to discover new magic, the community virtue would be to kill them young, before they brought doom down on the entire community.

The ONLY safe way to exist is to follow the old ways. Dokal Hairyman brought people through the darkness, and those who follow his ways will continue to survive. Everything else is not just damning you personally, but probably your family, your community, and possibly the whole land.