From covenant to contract: Calvinism, the written constitution and American civil religion

虽然美国是一个严格的世俗政体，正如宪法所保证的那样，这种世俗性的基础在于第一批殖民地定居点的加尔文主义，并且可以追溯到路德会的两个王国学说。 目前美国国际外交的言论，主要是基于正义与邪恶的对抗，而根深蒂固的美国理想的天定命运，紧张的边界宪法分离的教会和国家。 理解这些紧张关系对澳大利亚在美国外交政策中的合作具有重要意义。

Although the United States is a strictly secular polity as guaranteed in the Constitution, the grounds of that secularity lie in the Calvinism of the first colonial settlements and may be traced to the Lutheran two-kingdoms doctrine. The current rhetoric of American international diplomacy, based largely on a righteous confrontation with evil, while deep-seated in American ideals of manifest destiny, strains at the borders of the constitutional separation of Church and State. An understanding of these tensions has strong implications for Australian collaboration in US foreign policy.