Ah baloney! Calvin and Luther were not very big on religious freedom either. You are applying modern values to the Middle Ages. Read any unbiased history of Christianity and your eyes will be opened. The Reformers, were no better when it came to the persecution of those who did not agree with them. And both Catholics and Protestants burned witches at the stake. Which I expect you would agree was just as wrong as buring Christians at the stake. That was how it was back then. There was really no such thing as freedom of religion. If your ruler was a Catholic you better be a Catholic, and if he was a Protestant you better be a Protestant. Brush up on your history if you care about the truth. And get a decent, history book, something with recent scholarship, not crap written by somebody with an agenda.
Really?
To this very day, in the 21st century, wherever the Church of Rome has political power, the Bible is still shunned as "dangerous". It still does all it can to keep the closed canon of Scripture away from the people.
To this very day, in the 21st century, the Roman Church has never retracted its official denial of religious freedom and what it considers to be its right to use violence to force people to accept its doctrines.
This is documented by the Hefleys in their book, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs Of The 20th Century, (Mott Media, 1979)
"Calvin and Luther were not very big on religious freedom either --- both Catholics and Protestants burned witches at the stake"
Luther and Calvin had been indoctrinated by, and steeped in Roman catholicism all their lives. De-programming takes time.
But God is patient, and as events unfolded, it is clear that he considered it more needful to reform his church back to the origional theological doctrines first.
And as his reformation proceeded, he showed the ones he was using to do it (and their students) many biblical principles, including the fact that he created all men equal and that they and receive their rights and freedoms (including religious freedom) from him.
Eventually, those of that "REFORMED" church came to America. Luckily, of the 55 Framers of the Constitution, 45 of them were very strong Calvinists. They made absolutely sure when they drew up our founding documents, that no religious tyrant of ANY stripe would ever be able to gain absolute political power in America.
The non-establishment clause of the First Amendment absolutely prohibits the theological doctrines of the Bible to be explicitly woven into the fabric of government.
However, America was founded on biblical *principles* by Christian men who had a deep commitment to the closed canon of Scripture.
The Biblical view of the world -- the existence of God who is active in human history, the authority of the Scripture, the inherent sinfulness of man, the existence of absolute objective morality, and God-given transcendent rights -- was the philosophic foundation of the Constitution. The American community presumed a common set of values which were principally biblical.
The founding principles of the Republic were clearly informed by biblical truth.
As long as America's Constitution and Bill of Rights are upheld, we will have nothing to fear from tyrants who falsely teach their "faithful" that the infallible Word of God is a "dangerous" book, and refuses to retract its official denial of religious freedom and what it considers to be its right to use violence to force people to accept its doctrines, just has in the past.
The only thing that prevents it from enforcing its religion on the world, is absolute political power.
God, himself, is the inspiration for our Constitution. Those who want to dictate to, and dominate others, hate it....
....just like they hate the true God and his infallible Word, the closed canon of Scripture.