Yes, you can. That is one reason I dislike anyone attempting to “prove” we were founded on some monolithic absolutist principle(s).
What I mean (if you mean your “common people” posts) is to verify whether or not these people were all/mostly Christians in the sense that they understood the term—did they consider themselves “Christians,” go to rituals, etc. I didn’t mean “prove”—at least I don’t remember saying to do this—in the way I’ve been asked to “prove” Enlightenment influence.
What I mean by the Enlightenment role is that it colored the glass through which we viewed all past texts, principles, etc. I don’t mean it absolutely influenced the founding. I mean in the same way that Aquinas saw Christianity through the light of Aristotle or the way Euripides viewed the Greek religion through in a time coming after the philosophy of Socrates.
While I would be very cautious in equating the very wide gap of interpretation of something like the Bible—which is very mystical almost all of the time, and very, very ambiguous especially in the Old Testament, but also in Revelation, and other parts of the New Testament—with the relatively straight-forward propositions of many of the Enlightenment philosophers or scientists—ex: there’s not many ways to interpret Newton’s science or Tom Paine’s “Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens, when a king worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully with the follies either of age or infancy.”—I would not in the least rule out that we continue to interpret Enlightenment texts in the light of our contemporary context. BUT, I would also suggest that the two texts of are a very different nature. The Bible is imaginative in the extreme, one of the most powerfully imaginative works yet produced (I mean this in nothing but a positive sense); the texts of the Enlightenment, while handy and well-expressed, are not imaginative literature. They lack the power to require, as Bloom puts it, “misreading.” Comparatively, one could look at the relationship between the legal writings of Edward Coke and the poetry of Walt Whitman. In the former, everything is generally practical, empirical, and unimaginative—though important, obviously; the latter is pure imagination, and offers up the true sublime to the mind, and requires—because poetry and imaginative literature and religious writings make use of symbolism, narrative, sonority of syllable, and every other formal device that supports the ambiguity (a positive) of the text—the reader to instinctively interpret that object which has so affected his mind and senses. I would say this leads not to “no principles,” but to many versions of a truth—Aquinas and Adams both had their versions of Christianity; the fact that there are two versions does not mean that “certitude” slips from the sphere of principle, but that reality has been burst open into many versions of principle; as Godard says in Notre Musique, “Truth has two faces.” I would add many more of those faces to the equation.
I view this as an encouraging, optimistic light to view the world and everything in it; it does not reduce reality, but allows for the emanation of truth from many mouths. It requires us to not thrust towards the easy answer, but to admit many causalities and strive for the solid truth of complex reality.
