[cubano]

Not sure why that would be the case, given that the USA, at least, was founded by a bunch of enlightenment fans, the products of a time when the christian church's credibility was foundering.

Nope...simply wrong.

All (not some) of the successful colonial group of North America were fundamentalists who were facing persecution from the Church of England for not agreeing with King Henry VIII.

Most were, of course, protestants who were simply following the lead of Luther and "rolling there own" version of Religion that they created due to some inspired readings of the Bible, which was of course now available in their language due to the printing press.

[gumby]

Henry was long dead before England colonized North America. Of course there was no Enlightenment "movement" (for lack of a better term) at that time so I thought it would be obvious that I was talking about the USA, i.e. late 18th century (1760s - 1780s) where indeed, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau et al were far more influential among the power structure than the book of Leviticus.

Which you can trivially confirm for yourself by a cursory glance at, for example, the Federalist papers, writings of Franklin, Jefferson et al.