The United States is a 'secularized Christian nation' - built and populated and purposed largely by the descendants of European Christian emigres.
It is part of modern-day Christendom - utilized here as a loose umbrella-label.
Its laws are largely based upon English Common and Statutory Law, which, in turn, is the descendant and inheritor of the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, with some considerable Roman and Salic Law - as reinterpreted and selectively preserved and reaffirmed by the Church across the Dark and Middle Ages - tossed into the salad for good measure.
Its culture and traditions and morals spring largely from European Christian culture and tradition and morals, prior to its transplantation to the New World, and its continued evolution in an environment where accountability to old European authority and old European tradition gradually and increasingly lost their hold.
By the time of the American Revolution, this morphing or evolution of law and traditions was already well underway, and, as we set up shop for ourselves (established our own sovereign country), our Founders did what they could, to avoid the worst excesses of the previous century - the English Civil War, and the Thirty Years War - both of which were about as distant to the Founding Fathers in time as the American Civil War is to us in the present day - still very much alive in the memory and thought of that society.
Our own secularism owes its creation and sustenance (its continued existence) largely to a desire by the Founders to avoid the creation of a Church of America rather than any particular desire to accommodate Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc., at the time - all of which were largely alien and very thinly represented in the American population of the times.
It is more accident than intention, that such secularism and Separation of Church and State have also worked to the advantage of other belief-systems - and atheists - both over time and in recent decades - so let's not delude ourselves that the Founding Fathers were all about equal accommodation for those other belief systems and for atheism.
And, in any highly unlikely fictional condition of extremis, in which non-believers were forced to choose to declare their allegiance to belief system A or B or C, the lion's share of American atheists would come down on the side of Christianity, out of respect for tradition and loyalty to their European Christian family histories and its culture and morals.
The vast majority of Americans are either Christians - to some extent or another - or non-believers who are descended from long lines of Christians, and whose families (as recently as parents or grandparents) were practicing Christians, of one faction, sect or another.
Spiritually, and metaphorically, and encompassing atheists with such a tradition, the vast, vast majority of Americans are 'Christians' - used here as a broad and metaphorical cultural label as much as a label for identifying religious beliefs.
Consequently, it is entirely valid, appropriate and correct, to label the United States as a Christian country - with a boat-load of qualifiers attached to that label; specifically, America is a SECULARIZED Christian country; largely Christian in both practice and sympathies, but committed to equality across the entire spectrum of belief systems.
Given that the United States was founded by a leadership that was largely Christian in both practice and tradition, it is logical and appropriate to assume that its official references to a Creator or Divine Providence or a godhead were intended to represent the Judeo-Christian vision of a godhead.
It is also logical and appropriate to assume that the Founders crafted a Separation of Church and State in order to prevent the eventual creation of a Church of America akin to the Church of England, which was so highly problematic in the 1500s and 1600s of recent memory for them, and to avoid the insanity of the religious wars of the previous century.
America is a Secularized Christian Country, committed to the prevention of Church interference with the State, and open to practitioners of all belief systems, and completely tolerant even of those who hold no such beliefs at all.
This labeling of America as a Secularized Christian Nation will not sit will with many atheists, but that does not alter the truth and accuracy of the observation.
Is Christianity slowly losing its ex officio grip upon the State in our present age, such as that grip ever existed? Perhaps. But that is largely true of all religious belief systems practiced here in the US, not just Christianity.
Popular education has a tendency to thin-out the 'religious' element in the population, but, over time, that will probably even itself out, and a balance will be reached. A great many highly educated people are also firm believers in a godhead and in their religious morals, if not in all their dogma. Many are 'Cafeteria Christians', as well, cherry-picking those aspects of the belief system that seem good or right to them, and setting aside those elements which do not meet with their approval.
Such thinning-out trends usually do not last overly long - not more than a generation or two - and it doesn't take much (by way of crisis or disaster or long periods of hardship) for generation A or B to tip the scales and to actually begin increasing the number of believers and practitioners and parishoners.
The hand-rubbing, lip-smacking glee with which aggressive, militant atheists (religion-haters) pursue their propaganda about a thinning-out of practicing Christianity, is a source of great amusement to the vast numbers of people who know better.
