Recomendo a leitura deste excelente e conciso artigo de Bruce Thornton: The Faith of our Fathers
Even the most tepid of believers among the Founders assumed that the health and success of the American republic depended on the vitality of religious belief. As George Washington put it in his "Farewell Address": "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports." Famed deist Thomas Jefferson once asked, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?" Thomas Paine, accused of atheism, wrote at the beginning of The Age of Reason, "I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life." So too another Enlightenment hero, Benjamin Franklin: "Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That he ought to be worshipped."
(...)
If Judeo-Christian belief is so central to the ideals that created our government in the first place - if, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights" - then the current anti-Christian fundamentalism strikes at the root of our political order.
(...)
The secularists have failed to provide an alternative for the religion that they have discarded. Into this vacuum has rushed any number of pseudo-religions, from Marxism to scientism to environmentalism, that are infinitely more irrational and mischievous than traditional Christianity. Yet this secularism is the creed dominating the schools, one more dogmatic, more intolerant of dissent, and more prone to self-righteous hypocrisy - in short, more fundamentalist than the beliefs of most Christians. For those concerned about the dangers of religion to our political life, then, look to these creeds, which are passed off as the fruits of science and reason, rather than to a Christianity that has been banished from the political culture it helped to create.
