What do England, Denmark, Norway, and Iran have in common? Official religions.
State-sponsored religion, if it's Christian, is not something to be afraid of; just ask a Brit, Dane, or Norwegian.
Where did bounds on the absolute power (of kings) and the specification of enforceable rights (i.e., a written constitution) arise? Pre-Christian pagan Germany? Buddhist India or China? No, such originated in Greece and Rome, and flowered in Christian Europe, most notably in the Magna Carta (1215, in the middle of the misnamed Dark Ages).
I'm thankful that a group of Puritans crossed the Atlantic, wrote a great document on self-government, and planted the seed that grew into America.
Interestingly, do you remember from history class, how the Puritans established their initial economic system as communism, and abandoned it only after they nearly starved? Christians are idealists, and served as the catalyst for emancipation, prohibition/temperance, and suffragism.
