Timeline: This nation was first populated from 1621 to 1776 by refugees and emigrants whose influence of Protestant doctrine prevailed. Their mindset determined the underlying precepts that made this, if not a Christian nation, at least one which allowed the Christian religion to flourish and produce America's greatness.
Looking at the general run of our rulers, particularly of the Supreme Court oligarchy, they were predominantly of the Protestant Reformation loyalty. Their forbears came here to escape the stifling dominance of state-funded religion, and they firmly incorporated this aversion into our Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance. Yet tolerance of personal belief in a Jesus Christ of the Bible, and practice of His principles became the approved norm.
Subsequently, though, the need for citizens to flesh out the great material opportunities necessitated a massive intake of immigrants whose loyalty was no longer to personal religious freedom of preferences, but rather the allegiance to statist religious forms which had the long history of controlling rulers and governments.
From that point, the long march of displacing Protestant values and morality began to undermine the original intentions of the Founders, of freedom from government contol and freedom of the marketplace of ideas. First, this misplaced liberal tolerance infected the upper classes of nominal Protestants, then spread across the population, resulting in election of liberal presidents and legislators.
Today we have almost full fruition of the rejecting the founding principles, by rejecting the basic religion that bore a free nation. With the replacement of Souter and Stevens, the Highest Court is finally rid of the slightest taint of the vestiges of the protestantism which originally prevailed. (Although, thank God, that a few of the remaining are to be honored for their desire to restore the philosophy of Original Intent!)
What has already preceded this in the executive branch? It is hard to believe that our current highest Executive Magistrate supports the doctrine of our founders, isn't it? What next?
The body of legislators and bureaucrats has long ago largely gone over to suppressing Christianity in education and government at all levels.
What are we to expect to move us as a nation farther away from Biblical Christian principles? Will election of Willard Romney ring in yet another acceptance of Mormonism at the highest level? Might we not expect him to implement another drift in the judiciary by preferring the nomination of his fellow religionists in the judiciary and bureaucracy? Would that be to our best interests?
I wonder. (But still ready to accept God's determined Will.)
King Philippe III is the fellow who started it off. When his father, Philippe II died in 1598 (along with a number of other European notables) that opened up the Americas to smart young people with advanced thinking ~ so Philippe III and his friends came up with the Treaty of London (1604) which crammed down the idea of American settlement according to an Hapsburg or Spanish division of the territory.
He gave his cousin James an area called Acadia. He gave his other cousin, the King of France, Canada. He then carved out a colony called Carolana (now North and South Carolina) ~ probably because they'd discovered gold there.
The rest, West of the Alleghenies was identified for future settlement as time, circumstance and energy would allow, and the part East of the Alleghenies was an experiment where Protestants from Europe, except "the Dutch", could settle.
Virginia was not all that big ~ it encompassed everything we now call Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Downstate New York, Long Island, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia.
By the standards of the time that was huge though.
Over the next couple of centuries Spain weakened, France weakened, England strengthened, and the custom of Protestants going to America to settle continued.
We date our family's arrival to as early as 1502 ~ with various other individuals coming here over the 1500s to work as surveyors, researchers, or just adventurers ~ one of their cousins was a noted Catholic dissenter in Spain who advocated opening the American missions up to all the various orders and brotherhoods and not just to one group of priests (as had been the case). Schism was avoided when even King Philippe II saw the wisdom of that action and convinced the Popes to go along with it (they still having civil authority over each and every priest in every order).
By 1598, as the news of the death of Philippe and Elizabeth spread there was an aggressive rush to carve chunks out of the Americas and tens of thousands of Europeans began history's greatest landrush.
By 1621 there were actually places with names around here, but it wasn't until the 1670s that it became necessary once again to be concerned with whether or not someone was Catholic or Protestant. Implicit in the Peace of Westphalia (which ended the Thirty Years War) was the concept of "the national church", so the freewheeling Americans were reined in. Charles II took the English throne as a quite tamed monarch.
In brief, Our America began as a Protestant "geto" protected by the Catholic King of Spain ~ which is something we've forgotten about. He was one of history's good guys and he loved to party hearty!