Glad to see some are interested. Where do i get that resource?
The political side is secondary to the spiritual, yet insofar as conservatism goes, an increasing number of conservatives seem to suppose it came out of bottle, and that the effects of a living (not institutionalized) Christianity and its evangelicalism were and are not crucial to the real greatness of a nation. And more importantly, to the salvation of souls.
Early on, in a pamphlet for Europeans titled Information to Those Who Would Remove to America (1754), Benjamin Franklin wrote, in part:
“...serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested His approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness by which the different sects treat each other, and by the remarkable prosperity with which He has been please to favor the whole country.
Alexis de Tocqueville commented,
“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.” - Democracy in America, Volume I Chapter XVII (1835)
Os Guinness comments that,
“while America has never officially been a “Christian Republic,” for much of its history the Christian faith has been a leading contribution to its unofficial civil religion.”
Another great historical resource is Frothingham's "History of the Rise of the Republic . . . ." A search for this 1800's history will reveal copies available. Frothingham traces what he calls "the Christian idea of man" in the development of the Republic.