According to TS Eliot, how do literary standards split from religious standards?

New critics believed that literature is not to be valued for its ethical and theological significance.
But TS Eliot held the opinion that,
"Literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and
theological standpoint."
Although standards yet it has been believed for a long time that there is no relationship between
religion and literature. Eliot believes that there is and there should be a relationship between the
two. Eliot says that literature has been and probably will always be judged by some moral codes
and these codes are different for each generation. Generations' moral codes and standards
change with time, it is the evidence of a human perfectibility rather it is the only evidence of non-
meaningful foundations for moral judgements. Elliott laments over the rationality behind the
separation of power literary and religious judgement.
"I am convinced that we fail to realise how completely, and yet how irrationally, we
separate our literature from our religious judgements."
Exemplifying literature by novel he says this secularization has been a gradual process for the
last three hundred years. Scenes before the process have been continuous. The process is
divided into three phases. In the first phase for all the novels in which faith is taken for granted
and omitted from its picture of life. The authors belonging to this face are: Fielding and
Thackeray. In the second phase the faith is doubted, worried about and contested. It includes
authors like George Eliot, George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. The third phase is the age in
which we are living and authors included are all contemporary novelists except James Joyce.

Modern literature is not very ethical and valuable, the modern readers do not have the wisdom
to be able to obtain knowledge of life, comparing one view against the other. Moreover, the
knowledge of life that we obtain from fiction is not of life itself but it is the knowledge of other
people's knowledge of life.
The reader must keep in mind two things — 'what we like' that is what we really feel; and 'what
we ought to like' that is the understanding of our shortcomings.
For literary judgement we need to be acutely aware of two things at once: of 'what we
like' and of 'what we ought to like'.
Eliot says, as honest men we must not assume that what we like is what we ought to like; and
as honest Christians we should not assume that we do like what we ought to like.
Eliot is mainly concerned with secularisation of literature. In his words,
…I would wish for the existence of two literatures, one for Christian consumption and the
other for the pagan world…
It is the duty of Christians to use certain standards in addition to those used by the rest of the
world. It is the duty of Christians to use certain standards in addition to those used by the rest of
the world; and then by these criteria and standards everything that we read must be tested. It
must be remembered that modern literature is written by those who are simply oblivious or
ignorant of the primacy of the supernatural over the natural world. Most of the books are written
by people who have no real belief in supernatural order. They are ignorant of the fact that there
are still so-called 'backward' and 'eccentric' people who believe in the supernatural. Eliot uses
these words ironically for the true believers.
…So long as we are conscious of the gulf fixed between ourselves and the greater part of
contemporary literature, we are more or less protected from being harmed by it…