PILLAR #1 

The United States' founding as a 

Christian, mostly Protestant, religious state

     This is critical, for reasons of church governance. The Protestant Reformation swept across parts of Europe. But in those countries, governance remained top down. The German Lutheran Church resembled the Catholic Church in Rome. 

     The Church of England was not Protestant, protesting nothing except whether Henry VIII could remarry at will. 

     There were Puritans in England who wanted change, and who practiced "bottom up" polity - collective identity. They considered the people, rather than any sort of institutional hierarchy, best suited to govern. 

     No other nation in history has been founded with bottom-up faith and bottom-up governance. 

     Of note, the first permanent English settlement was the Jamestown colony, 1607, not Puritans but Anglicans, later known as Episcopalians. 

Next: PILLAR #2, Common Law