If they got their way, and made religion state enforced de jure, they’d fall out with each other within a year of victory, the way the televangelists feud, and use the power of the state to attack each other. The founders were close in time to the religious wars that had wracked Europe for centuries. They were much savvier than patricians tend to be. They also knew the realities of the Star Chamber, which by mission creep could one day feature their appearances on the instruments of persuasion.

Authoritarian movements negate meaning, whatever their ostensible ideology. What was said, what is fact and what has been proven to be for the good or for the ill has no meaning. The ideological language itself has no meaning. It’s a gloss, a code, a set of talking points that call for nothing more than moving towards greater control. If the authoritarian right didn’t have Christianity to work with, they’d find something else that could be enforced and protected by the power of the state, like social darwinism, with the final appeal in civil matters made to a numinous authority that wanted done whatever his most powerful spokesman said wanted doing. The religious angle here is a useful tax dodge.

The organized bodies they set up for its propagation also exist to negate the religious experience. Hence their animosity to the free thinking congregations.

Beware the fire, Mr. Paynter, and repent.

“…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…”