20. Peter Boston:

The formation of the United States was in many respects the apogee of the Enlightenment.
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The USA was at the time of the revolution mostly calvinist. This was the case of the Dutch,Swedish, German, reformed churches as well as the French Huguenots,Scottish Presbyterians and English Puritans. These are the f five points of calvinism developed at the Council of Dort in Holland in the early 1600′s at the time of Descartes in France and Galileo in Italy– or just before the 30 years war.

Calvinism was the religious cultural milieu in which the American revolution occurred. I would even go so far as to argue that the American revolution was the second try at a Calvinist revolution–the first being the Huguenot revolution in France–two hundred years earlier. (Though this was more like a civil war.)

The Calvinists believed that man was basically evil (see Jeremiah 17:9). It was from this initial belief about the condition of man that the founders derived the basis for constructing government.ie Men needed to be constrained with all manner of checks and balances.

(This distinguishes from the french revolution of 1789 which held that man was basically good–perhaps derived from Rousseau–but that conditions could make him bad.)

That said some of the founders like Jefferson, Adams &Franklin were children of the enlightenment. Here it should be understood that in politics the enlightenment was the result of the 30 years war and the decades of subsequent intermittent religious warfare in Europe. That is, the winner of the religious battle between the denominations was the state. Enlightenment in politics meant state power was dominant over church.

Almost to the day of the completion of the American revolution the USA began its long march away from Calvinism.