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"Sad thing is, I'm NOT an athiest... just someone who prefers to keep my relationship with God personal, rather than forcing it on those around me" ~ Chad Fairbanks

Lucky for you that America's Founders believed what they did about where men's rights come from, because they made sure that as long as we uphold and defend the Constitution, there will be no way anyone will be able to gain enough power to enforce their religious beliefs on anyone else.

"In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary American colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background. There were around three million persons in the thirteen original colonies by 1776, and perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or Puritan connection" (Douglas F. Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World — (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), p. 120.

The U.S. Constitution is a Calvinist's document through and through.

They made sure that in America, one man’s liberty will not depend upon another man’s (religious) conscience (as in Europe)!

Dr. George Bancroft, arguably the most prominent American historian of the 19th century — and not a Calvinist — stated:

"He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of he origen of American liberty"

The 55 Framers (from North to South):

John Langdon, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nicholas Gilman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Elbridge Gerry, Episcoplian (Calvinist)
Rufus King, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Caleb Strong, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nathaniel Gorham, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Roger Sherman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Samuel Johnson, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Oliver Ellsworth, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Alexander Hamilton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Lansing, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
Robert Yates, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
William Patterson, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
William Livingston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jonathan Dayton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
David Brearly, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Churchill Houston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Benjamin Franklin, Christian in his youth, Deist in later years, then back to his Puritan background in his old age (his June 28, 1787 prayer at the Constitutional Convention was from no "Deist")
Robert Morris, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
James Wilson, probably a Deist
Gouverneur Morris, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas Mifflin, Lutheran (Calvinist-lite)
George Clymer, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas FitzSimmons, Roman Catholic
Jared Ingersoll, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
John Dickinson, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Read, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Richard Bassett, Methodist
Gunning Bedford, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jacob Broom, Lutheran
Luther Martin, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Daniel Carroll, Roman Catholic
John Francis Mercer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McHenry, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Daniel of St Thomas Jennifer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Washington, Episcopalian (Calvinist; no, he was not a deist)
James Madison, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Mason, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Edmund Jennings Randolph, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James Blair, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McClung, ?
George Wythe, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Richardson Davie, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Hugh Williamson, Presbyterian, possibly later became a Deist
William Blount, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Alexander Martin, Presbyterian/Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Rutledge, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, III, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Abraham Baldwin, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Leigh Pierce, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Houstoun, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Few, Methodist

The founders identified the 13 colonies of their union as "Free Protestant". As Protestants, their Declaration in 1776 that "all men are created equal (in authority) " was consistent with the doctrine of their founder, the man who first openly protested the hierarchy of men (the pope and priests in the Roman Chatholic Church) over Christians. His name was Martin Luther. He was a Roman Catholic priest from Germany who began the "Protestant Reformation". He stated the following:

"I say, then, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man whatever has the right of making one syllable binding on a Christian man, unless it be done with his own consent.

Whatever is done otherwise is done in the spirit of tyranny...I cry aloud on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I proclaim with confidence that no kind of law can with any justice be imposed on Christians, except so far as they themselves will; for we are free from all."

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBERTY PRINCIPLES IN AMERICAN POLITICS
by Stephen L. Corrigan - http://w3.one.net/~stephenc/fun.html