That is exactly it's purpose and what it meant back in 1787. It was not speaking towards the issue of Muslims, Hindus or even Jews.
People have since interpreted it as applying to those other religions, but at the time it was written, those other religions were not even in the Founders minds. The prohibition of religious tests mentioned in the constitution was not comprehended to apply to those other groups.
Yep!
These were some of the most visionary men in history. They may have been culturally, and in many cases religiously, Christian, but they were not narrow-minded men. I can’t believe that they never anticipated that people might come to the US with different religious beliefs and that, if they did, they would not be ‘covered’ by the same principles of religious tolerance that the various Christian denominations were. Or that there would not be times when the federal government would have to intercede in a state’s “business”.
Jews have been here since the 1600s, and have had significant moral and spiritual influence for the good in our society. If we had kept things in the states as some seem to think the Founders intended in this regard, many of those Jews would not have been able to hold public office.
To say that ‘what was the norm back then, cannot be unconstitutional now’ is false, because we have outlawed a number of “norms” from back then – including slavery.
The founders were creating a general, principled system – not dictating how each future, perhaps unforeseeable, issue might be decided by that system and the generations that inherited it.