Furthermore, the US has never had an established Church to rebel against,
That was good for a chuckle. While true in the literal sense, since the Federal government formed as a result of the American Revolution never had an established Church, without the rebellion during the First Great Awakening of the 1740s against the established churches of the various colonies the character of the American Revolution would most certainly have been different, assuming the Revolution happened at all.
That's actually what I meant. 
There was no "state church."
There was no state church at that time but enormous parts of the character of the nascent nation came from the collective memory of the Great Awakening several decades previously, which in large part
was 'rebellion against the state church'. And there were individual states with established churches well into the nineteenth century.
Also, despite the definitions that jmfcst uses, my church isn't 'liberal'.
The general thrust of this thread, of course, is very true, and regrettable, but I'm not sure that this culture wouldn't find a way to go down the most unpleasant byways in serious Christianity even if it was seriously Christian. Come to think of it, there aren't many cultures, if any, that I can think of that
are seriously committed to their ostensible religion, from the point of view of that religion rather than that of the culture.
