"laws" in place by making them and hiding their "authority" behind an abstract entity, making those laws appear to have a transcendent foundation.
The strategy of approaching values and ethics this way is that said "laws" become dogma and that implies that they are not mutable nor questionable. Score one for authoritarians. Perhaps that was useful in order to provide a stable framework for tribes and cultures, (as in taming the masses) but it is far too easy to break that kind of rhetoric down when it is investigated carefully.
That aside, ethics and values can be ascertained using reason and are subject to a consensus, as is most of the abstraction of the thinking mind. Religion and "spirituality" as a subject approach merely up the ante and then come down to the rather immature and exceedingly irrational battle between ghosts in the machine where the adherents insist that, "My God is better than your god." or, "My revealed truth is more truthy than your revealed truth." That is the underlying problem with the "revealed" religions in general. The Abrahamic religions are noted for that and, though there is still tradition, taboo, etc., nature religions tend more towards a relationship with the environment and observation of phenomena in conjunction with the subjective aspect of experience. Also, there are contemplative and insightful approaches in the East that include and allow for more change and transformation as well as a transcendence of what we think of as religion itself--the nature of abstraction and thought being the focus.
To me, in these times, saying that a nation should be "God-centered" can be equated with an underlying impetus towards control and could be interpreted as a call to more authoritarian control with a corresponding demand for complicity and subservience. When we note the various behaviors of certain groups of "fundamentalists" we see a capacity to be easily manipulated via a form of so-called education, media, politics, biased religious rhetoric, etc.
One could argue that the underlying impact of a dominating, religion-based world view has been a contributing factor to many of the problems we face today--covertly and implicitly--whereby projections of dogma as actions and appeals to ancient tribal laws as obstructions consistently serve to contribute to suffering, misery, poverty, strife, war, and a long laundry list of grievous problems that the major religions have failed to have pragmatic solutions to.
When one smells that greasy, putrid stench of anyone who appeals to some divine being or dogmatic laws in order to shore-up or lend credence and validity to their authoritarian appeals and motivations, it may be extremely important--even vital--to call them out and do whatever is necessary to both acknowledge the right for people to believe as they choose, (or believe what is chosen for them) while simultaneously voicing dissent in a way that dissuades manipulation and control of others based on those beliefs.
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