I will try to give you two perspectives on your first question, only. The first is the following, with the second to be in my next post.

http://www.internationalcopsforchrist.com/proof-that-america-was-founded-as-a-christian-nation/

Proof That America Was Founded As A Christian Nation...

America was founded on three documents: The Declaration of Independence; The Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, and the Constitution. These documents give conclusive proof that America is a Christian nation. One does not need a law degree or a degree in history to grasp this t***h. It is obvious to anyone who does not have an agenda. Let us review the documents and show this proof.

Declaration of Independence

The Declaration has many references to God throughout the document. The most famous one is that men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

“We hold these T***hs to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

Here are more references to God found in the document:
Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”
Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World”
With a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence”

The Declaration of Independence does not identify the God whom they are addressing. This could be left open to interpretation and opinion.

The Constitution

The body of the Constitution makes no reference to God. The Constitution honors the Christian Sabbath. The President was given 10 days to sign a bill into law. The counting of the 10 days does not include the Sabbath. This is found in Article 1, Section 7, and Clause 2 which in part follows:

“If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law,”

When the Constitution was completed on September 17, 1787, it was signed by the delegates then to be ratified by the states. The delegates signed the Constitution in the “Year of our Lord.” This is a direct reference to Christianity. This is found in Article 7 which in part follows:

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, GO WASHINGTON–Presidt. and deputy from Virginia”

The Paris Peace Treaty of 1783

The Paris Peace Treaty was the document which formally ended the Revolution and granted the United States independence from Great Britain. In a real sense, the United States formally became a nation on September 3, 1783.

When the United States became a nation, it was done in the “name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.” The preamble to this Treat states it is based upon the “Holy and undivided Trinity.” The concept of the holy Trinity is unique to Christianity. This statement means the United States was founded on the Christian faith. The complete Preamble follows:

“In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity”

The Treaty then ends just like the Constitution with a statement it is being signed in the “Year of our Lord.” The witnesses representing the United States were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and D. Hartley. The section in part follows:
“In witness whereof we the undersigned, their ministers plenipotentiary, have in their name and in virtue of our full powers, signed with our hands the present definitive treaty and caused the seals of our arms to be affixed thereto.Done at Paris, this third day of September in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three”

D. HARTLEY
JOHN ADAMS
B. FRANKLIN
JOHN JAY

When this concept is applied to the Declaration of Independence, it is clear the reference to “All men are created equal,” was about the holy Trinity. The people of the United States are endowed by their Creator, the holy Trinity, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The God of the Bible is whom the United States is based upon. The unalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness come from the Judeo/Christian God and no one else. He is the Rock of our Republic.

Psalm 18:2 The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
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My next post takes a counter-view.

'WHY GOD IS IN THE DECLARATION BUT NOT THE CONSTITUTION'
https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/02/why-god-is-in-the-declaration-but-not-the-constitution/

No country venerates its “Founding Fathers” like the United States. Academics, legislators, judges, and ordinary citizens all frequently seek to validate their opinions and policy prescriptions by identifying them with the statesmen who led America to nationhood. It is not surprising, therefore, that debates about the role of religion in the United States are infused with references to the faith of the Founding Fathers and to the two greatest documents they gave to the fledgling republic: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. People across the religious spectrum, from the most devout believers to the most committed atheists, look to these documents for support. Yet the blessings they offer are mixed. The Declaration contains several references to God, the Constitution none at all. The reasons for this variation reveal a great deal about the founding principles of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence is an apology for revolution. Support for a complete break with Great Britain was growing stronger week by week in the spring of 1776, both in the Continental Congress and in the thirteen colonies at large. On June 7, 1776, a resolution advocating independence was presented to Congress by Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia delegation. Four days later Congress appointed a committee of five delegates to draft a document explaining the historic separation it would soon be v****g on.

The resulting Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by his fellow delegates, contains a theory of rights that depends on a Supreme Being, not man, for its validity. The Declaration states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is possible to see in these words an affirmation of the Founders’ religious faith, but God-given rights had less to do with theology in the summer of 1776 than they did with r*******n.


In stating that people’s rights were given to them by their creator, the Continental Congress endowed those rights with a legitimacy that knows no parallel in mortal sources. What God has given to man is not enjoyed at the sufferance of any monarch or government. Liberty is the inviolable birthright of all. The right of revolution proclaimed by the Declaration flows directly from this notion of inviolability: it is to secure people’s divinely endowed and unalienable rights that governments, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” are established. The people consequently have the right and indeed the duty to alter or abolish a form of government that becomes tyrannical.

The Declaration contains several other references to a higher power. The introduction states that the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle the American people to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the conclusion, Congress appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of its intentions and professes its “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” In each case, reference to a deity serves to validate the assertion of independence.

The genius of the Declaration is the inclusive way the divine is given expression. The appellations of God are generic. Adherents of traditional theistic sects can read the words “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge,” and understand them to mean the god they worship. The claims made on numerous Christian websites attest to this. Yet opponents of dogma read those same words and see an embracive, non-sectarian concept of divinity. This is no small testimony to the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers. All Americans could support the Revolution and independence. All can regard their rights as unalienable, their liberty as inviolable.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution contains no reference to God. At first, this may seem odd. Why did the men who drafted the Declaration invoke a Supreme Being several times, while the men who drafted the Constitution did not mention a higher power even once? Only six individuals signed both documents, so it could be hypothesized that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia in 1787 were a different and less religious group then the delegates to the Continental Congress, or perhaps that the delegates to the Continental Congress were savvy freethinkers cynically manipulating people’s belief in God to win support for their o*******w of British rule. Neither explanation holds water. Some of the Founders were conventional Christians and some were not, but the belief in a deity implied in the Declaration was sincere and likely universal among the delegates to both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. And a belief in the possibility of divine favor was held by even some of the least religious Founders. So, again, why no invocation of God in the second major founding document?

The threefold answer lies in the stated purposes of the Constitution, its religious neutrality, and the theory of government it embodies. Whereas the Declaration explained and justified a r*******n to secure God-given rights, the Constitution is a blueprint for stable and effective republican government in a free country. The Preamble to the Constitution declares that its purposes are “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” These are wholly secular objects; religious references are extraneous in a document drafted to further them.

Eighteenth century America was religiously diverse, and by the time of the Revolution religion was widely viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice. The Constitution acknowledged these realities and, unlike contemporary European political orders, promoted no sect and took no position whatsoever on theological issues. There is no state religion and Article VI of the Constitution provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The absence of references to a deity in the Constitution is consistent with the strict religious neutrality of the entire document.

The Constitution established a strong national government to replace the relatively feeble Confederation Congress created by the Revolutionary-era Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution is hardly a document glorifying top-down power. On the contrary, the theory of government underpinning the United States Constitution is popular sovereignty. The government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, not from an assembly of elders, not from a king or a prelate, and not from a higher power. The stirring opening words of the Preamble, “We the People of the United States,” make it clear both who is establishing the government and for whose benefit it exists. There is no consent required beyond the will of the people for the people to govern themselves.

This view that the Constitution is a bold assertion of popular sovereignty is often countered by pointing out how elitist some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were and how allegedly undemocratic the document they drafted was. Only the members of the House of Representatives were initially chosen directly by v**ers. Senators were to be chosen indirectly by state legislatures, and the President by e*****rs appointed by the state legislatures.

This criticism confuses an admittedly elitist preference for government by the able with a theory of power emanating from above. The Constitution not only rejected monarchy, but all forms of hereditary privilege and arbitrary rule. It established fixed rules that delimited the powers of the governors, not the rights of the governed. It is to the citizens and the states, not to the executive, that legislators are answerable. The source of all legislative and executive power can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the people.

And in the early years of the American republic, the people in question were deeply suspicious of power. There was considerable opposition to the Constitution as initially drafted, both in the state conventions called to ratify it and among ordinary Americans. Opponents believed that a centralization of authority would lead to tyranny and argued either for outright rejection or, at a minimum, for amendments to limit the powers of the new government and safeguard liberties. In such an anti-power environment, few Americans wished to see their new rulers claim, as European rulers did, that their authority was divine in origin. In creating a political order based on popular sovereignty, the Founding Fathers thus turned prevailing European political theory on its head. In place of the divine right of monarchs, the Declaration asserted the divine rights of all men, and both the Declaration and the Constitution source the legitimacy of political rule exclusively in the consent of the governed.

The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution do not therefore represent competing views of the existence of a Supreme Being or its role in American political life. They are two sides of the same coin. When read together, the Declaration and Constitution tell us that the people’s rights are divine in origin, sacred and unalienable, while governments are human in origin, answerable to the people and dependent entirely on their consent.

Close, but no cigar. You're right about the Declaration of Independence, though it was originally intended to inform the British people of the wrongs that had prompted the revolt in the first place, bypassing any government filter. Pretty much like Donald Trump sending out a tweet today and bypassing the media to talk to Americans directly. It did evolve into a 'mission statement' of sorts.

However, the Constitution does not so much 'lay out a structure' as delegate power and responsibilities to a group of elected people who volunteer to (and are charged with) fulfill(ing) those duties. (I hope that makes sense...) The Constitution is effectively the instruction manual for 'running the country', for want of a better term.

The Federalist Papers serve as more of an explanatory series of articles to support the original intent and meaning of the constitution. They were originally intended to persuade a very skeptical American public that the recommended Constitution was not only an improvement on the Articles of confederation, but also outlined a better, more effective form for government. Over the years, they have evolved into a sort of constitutional primer for legal theorists.

As far as skepticism goes, Patrick Henry refused to attend the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, saying "I smell a rat". If Patrick Henry was skeptical, imagine the side-eye that came from the average American.

Close, but no cigar. You're right about the Declaration of Independence, though it was originally intended to inform the British people of the wrongs that had prompted the revolt in the first place, bypassing any government filter. Pretty much like Donald Trump sending out a tweet today and bypassing the media to talk to Americans directly. It did evolve into a 'mission statement' of sorts.

However, the Constitution does not so much 'lay out a structure' as delegate power and responsibilities to a group of elected people who volunteer to (and are charged with) fulfill(ing) those duties. (I hope that makes sense...) The Constitution is effectively the instruction manual for 'running the country', for want of a better term.

The Federalist Papers serve as more of an explanatory series of articles to support the original intent and meaning of the constitution. They were originally intended to persuade a very skeptical American public that the recommended Constitution was not only an improvement on the Articles of confederation, but also outlined a better, more effective form for government. Over the years, they have evolved into a sort of constitutional primer for legal theorists.

As far as skepticism goes, Patrick Henry refused to attend the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, saying "I smell a rat". If Patrick Henry was skeptical, imagine the side-eye that came from the average American.

The problem you have is that the first mention of the United States of America is in the Declaration of Independence.

This is where the people of America declared their independence, identified themselves as a people and named their government.

The Articles of Confederation was the first attempt to create the government to fore-fill the goals of the Declaration of Independence.

When every one agreed that that wasn't working, they went back to the Declaration of Independence and exercised the right of a free people to change their government if the one they had wasn't working.

You'll notice that the Constitution, when placed before the public for acceptance, is the Constitution of the United States. Not the United States of America.

If the Constitution was by the United States of America, then it would have been the federal government that created the Constitution, not the free people of the different separate United States.

As each separate state joined into the Constitution, the United States of America was created, as called out for in the Declaration of Independence.

The reason that the very skeptical American public was persuaded, was because how the Constitution was to work, was explained to them.

As I say, the Federalist Papers are the instruction manual to the Constitution.

They explained the problems they were trying to solve, explained how the Constitution was going to address those problems and why they thought that their solutions would work.