How well do secular leaders who challenge religious leaders usually do, historically speaking?

As a general rule, secular rulers who directly challenge religious leaders have a lot of problems, and are often crushed completely. We think of the medieval popes excommunicating leaders, who had to come begging to them on their knees for forgiveness, we think of the key role Pope John Paul II played in bringing down the Soviet Union, we think of the need for secular leaders in the medieval world to create alternative popes to support them, in their ambitions and worldly goals, because they knew how essential it was to have some religious backing, even an artificially created one. The critical social role that religion always has, and still does play in the lives of ordinary citizens muust never be underestimated. Religion has always aided in education and social services, and it has always played a key role in setting guardrails on the actions of politicians, not allowing them to overstep their bounds in their actions, protecting the people against the excessive oppression of ruthless tyrants. To some extent, so called "atheistic" societies simply make a religion of the state itself, but, frequently, this disappoints, and these so called atheistic societies have to admit and tolerate more conventional religious figures, whether they like it or not. Robespierre was largely brought down by his attempt to formally replace Roman Catholicism, in France, folowing the Revolution, with the worship of the "Supreme Being", perhaps a projection of the state itself. The communist Chinese have found they can't really do entirely without Confucious, Buddha, and even Roman Catholicism, and some traditional polytheistic religions like the worship of the sea Goddess Mazu. Lenin and Stalin would have been truly horrified to see Tsar Nicholas II now worshipped as a Holy Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, after they murdered him and his entire family!