Would you please clarify what is meant by “Protestant religious foundation” as distinguished from “Christianity”.
I’ll take a stab at it.
American Catholics don’t like to hear it, but Catholicism till quite recently was utterly hostile to everything America stood for.
The idea of democracy and enforceable human rights as against the State, for instance, emerged in a Protestant nation, England.
Catholicism specifically denounced as heresy the very idea of individual religious freedom up thru at least the latter 19th century.
Catholic religious hierarchy would seem to make the Church more comfortable with secular aristocracy than Protestantism inherently is.
“....clarify what is meant by “Protestant religious foundation vs Christianity...”
Not just protestant, but a very particular flavor. Hard scrabble hard core backwoods hillbilly flavor.
“A Hessian captain, fighting on behalf of the British, told a friend in Germany in 1778, “call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.”
40%+/- of Washington’s duration troops were first or second generation Ulster Scots as were the Over the Mountain Men in Carolinas as well.
Read more in The Journal of the American Revolution.
http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/presbyterian-rebellion/
Google American Revolution and Presbyterianism for the full effect of the Scottish Reformation (John Knox)and Scots Age of Enlightenment (Adam Smith for example) on America’s founding and intended character.
Yes, virtually ALL the colonies, even Maryland, were heavily protestant. Even PA with the Quakers had strong German Protestant influences. In other words, the US was not primarily ever a Catholic nation. This generally, though not always, meant that there was less of willingness to tolerate top-down governance, and rather a tendency to embrace bottom up common-law governance.