A little context: I'm reading the book "The Paradigm" by Jonathan Cahn, which attempts to use Old Testament Isreal's turning away from God to the worship of Baal as a doom-and-gloom warning for events in modern America, based on what I feel is a very flawed knitting together of coincidences between ancient Israeli political and religious figures and modern American ones. I can see where the logic is problematic, but I don't know enough about the relationship between politics and religion in America historically to determine if the fundamental premise of the book is outright wrong. (that premise: Both nations were founded on the "Word of God" and experienced problems when turning away from God.) While I know that Christian values have certainly influenced American politics, can anyone reasonably go so far as to say that Christianity formed the very foundation of the country?