It is a real possibility that WoTC is trying to disengage the concept of divine casters from deities. They sorta did it already with druids and rangers IIRC. The Paladin stuff sorta presented it as an option, but the wording has been so noncommittal and nebulous that we have reached a point where large swathes of the community don't recognize the connection between paladins and religion, even in worlds where it's part of the bones of the setting. Wouldn't be surprised if clerics were next. There was a tie-in survey sometime before the big D&D movie where one of the questions asked how people would feel about non-religious clerics (in the Forgotten Realms!)
My personal tinfoil hat theory? I suspect it's just WoTC trying to chase the biggest demographic possible yet again. I have known personally from my days playing D&D that a lot of people of certain religious dispositions really don't like the idea of 'having' to roleplay a follower of a religion. There's also a portion of players who just don't want to engage with a roleplay-heavy class, so boiling the class down to essentially a superhero who has to stay true to his convictions instead of becoming familiar with the dogma of some deity and adhere to their external moral code is more approachable.
I wasn't into DnD before this game got announced but if true, that seems like a very sad development. Then again, what is stopping Larian from enacting their own 'homebrew' rules for this game? Isn't that very much the spirit of DnD?
