re: Conservative Christians rally around persecuted Judge Roy Moore

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The Founders didn't do stuff like that, nor did anyone else in government for a long time. They also didn't start "in god we trust" or put "under god" in the pledge. All of that was added much later. The government was clear of religious references at its founding. Don't try to pin this on a "newer interpretation based on a godless worldview." Try reading some history books and get back to me.

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really? Have you read the Declaration of Independence?

Benjamin Franklin (not exactly the exemplar of Christian piety) recommended that a chaplain be selected to entreat God through prayer at the start of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

The Continental Congress in 1785 issued a proclamation of a day of fasting and prayer to all of the colonists. Washington and Adams, as Presidents, called for national days of prayer. That practice stopped with Jefferson and for 40+ years but then picked back up.

Most of the founders of this nation prayed and called others to prayer or praised those calls. They weren't anti-religion--far from it--but only did not want the state to coerce citizens into religious observance, attempting to protect religious liberty.

Religious liberty is what this is about, not squelching religion. The 1st amendment was intended to protect the religious from the overzealous in positions of authority from forcing the people to abandon their faiths and worship a certain deity a certain way (or prevent worship altogether). The separation of church and state is not a complete and total separation where the state has to maintain a posture of secularism in all ways, but that the state cannot impose a particular religion on the people by force.

Unfortunately this position has been butchered to the point where it is assumed by many that the government should not touch religion and religion should not touch government at all. This leads to arguments for removing "In God We Trust" from coinage; halting the practice of an invocation to start the days activities on the Hill; and removing all references to religious symbols in public spaces (like the 10 commandments, taking this back to Roy Moore).