The change was voted down. While many founders were indeed Christians, they wanted to create a secular government.
Anybody remember the part in the Constitution about "no religious test"?
Our nation's strength springs from freedom, and respect for individual rights.
And it's a good thing, too, because it's theologically illiterate. The Word, the second Person of the Trinity, is eternal, and all creatures have their existence THROUGH the eternal Word. The Word became Flesh 2,000 years ago, and only THEN was there a "Lord Jesus Christ." It is GOD who is the Creator--all three Divine Persons. Jesus Christ is God, but it is absurd to ascribe creation to "the Lord Jesus Christ," for even though Christ is the eternal Word made Flesh, "Jesus Christ" did not exist when the universe was made.
While good generalities it would be equally true that the American Revolution and resulting independent nation sprang from preservation of The Rights of Englishmen, which to the overwhelming Whiggish tendancies of the colonists meant freedom from Arbitrary Power (as execised by the democratic instituion of Parliment) and the established Common Law (which dealt with Presciptive Law and not metaphysical rights).
Now I am not responding to you to claim that we are "a Christian Nation", but instead to share with you that my readings in history have lead me to believe that the assesment made by the article of this thread is not very far off the mark. The big question is, if we were so profoundly a nation brought into being by our Christian heritage, coupled with the Judeac underpinnings, what does that mean for us today in analyzing where our nation has had some obvious wrong turns in the march to the brink of world socialism?
One place to start to answer that question is in Michael Novak's recent book On Two Wings : Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding . Novak makes no belittlement of the Common Sense wing and does a fine job of showing the background of Madison defending the Baptists and the other things going on at the time that preserved the secular nature of our Constitution.
Kirk's first principle for Conservatism was the belief in an Enduring Moral Order. Sowell's belief (in A conflict of Visions) that the believers in the Constrained view of man hold the same issue central also affirms this. Conservatives want no Test Law....but we do want an shared understanding that without a common acceptance of a general Enduring Moral Order we are left standing defenseless against the onslaught of the Enlightenment Metaphysics right down through Marx and Choamsky of today.
In an age where every socialist talks more of various "rights" than any libertarian leaning conservative, we can only get Rights correctly confined back to 'individual rights' if the historical foundations of their value and there moral (and Christian) origination can be understood by all the citizenry.