During his presidency, {Thomas Jefferson} had literally cut and pasted the standard biblical account into a text more to his liking, omitting Jesus’ virgin birth, resurrection and supernatural miracles while maintaining the ethical teachings…

“God in America” takes from the example of Jefferson and Jesus a thesis: America cannot possibly be understood without understanding the role that religion has played over the centuries. And that role, the series demonstrates, is not only to stir personal faith but also to inform civic values and political decisions.

“As you look at the history,” said Ms. Mellowes, 64, who is the series producer, “it’s just a historical fact that while the founding fathers may have wanted to separate the institutions of church and state, they didn’t want to separate religion and politics. Those are two different things.

It’s fair to say they were wary that religion could incite conflict and on the other hand they saw religion was essential to the composition of a moral citizenry. Which was necessary for the survival of this fledgling republic.”

Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University, makes a similar point on-screen as he discusses the rising revolutionary sentiment in colonial America.

“I think America is a story,” he put it. “And Americans, as they move — as they first come here, as they move west, as they move out into the world — they’re telling a story, and the story they are telling is the biblical story. I think it’s the Exodus story. They’re telling a story of the movement of a people out of slavery into freedom, out of the Old World into the New.”

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/arts/television/03religion.html?_r=1&hpw