"The United States is a Christian-founded nation"

[Sword of Christ]

You still have to prove if Jesus even existed.

Yes it is possible he didn't physically exist on Earth but was based on some other kind of shared experience of God in form of visions and so on. Here's an interesting book on that possibly. There were Docetist and monophysite Christians who believed that Jesus never had a human Earthly nature at all so that would be a possibility. The encounter with Christ could be something like St Paul's visionary/mystical experience on the road to Damacus when he was temporarily struck blind. There's an interesting book on this written by an atheist/pantheist and former believer.



Personally I think there was an historical Jesus of some kind but I'm open minded to the other possibility as well seeing as I don't think it necessary precludes a genuine revelation from a God who does exist. He could manifest into human history through other means and the shared experience people had will still be a reality. The author of this book didn't seem to consider that possibility he just goes off into a materialist tangent in the second half of the book. The truth of matter is going to be complicated but it will be something surprising to you either way. As long as God exists and the Bible and the gospels are the revelation from God to humanity then perfectly happy about it.