Yet actual, living Jews were barred from holding public office, and have been hated and discriminated against by many “Christians” throughout history - regardless of this ‘special case’ status that you perceive.
The various state religious ‘tests’ for holding public office were incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution, clearly exhibiting a preference for one or some religions over others. But some of them remained long after we had become a much more religiously heterogeneous society. They were only finally ended by the Supreme Court in 1961 - in a case that actually involved someone of no faith at all, in my own state of Maryland: an atheist who had been barred from becoming a notary.
Religion is an intensely personal issue between a human being and God. You can’t ‘make’ anyone religious or even know if anyone truly is or not; you can’t keep those who do profess faith from actually being outright fakes and hypocrites. (And I’d much rather have an honest atheist or agnostic in a public office than a hypocritical Christian.)
There should be no religious tests for public office, and should never have been, under this Constitution.
I know they were heavily persecuted by the Catholics, especially in Spain and Portugal, but I don't know of any organized Protestant persecutions against them, at least up until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.
Certainly I don't know of any widespread persecutions of them in the early US, but there was a lot of anti-semitism that manifested here after the 1900s. I do know that the Southern Confederacy had at least one Jewish Senator back in the 1860s.
The various state religious ‘tests’ for holding public office were incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution, clearly exhibiting a preference for one or some religions over others.
The religious tests of the various states were in fact legal and accepted at the time. It wasn't until the Courts started applying the 14th amendment doctrine to the states that this became an issue, and this is an obvious misapplication of the intent of the 14th amendment.
But some of them remained long after we had become a much more religiously heterogeneous society.
I acknowledge that society changes. I also recognize there is an appropriate methodology in place to make existing laws conform to social changes, and that is the amendment process. Simply reinterpreting existing law to mean something different than what it was original intended when it was created is dishonest and it is a methodology that is rife with moral hazard and unintended consequences.
Liberalizing the meaning of law beyond it's original intent is contrary to reason and is in fact despotic.
They were only finally ended by the Supreme Court in 1961 - in a case that actually involved someone of no faith at all, in my own state of Maryland: an atheist who had been barred from becoming a notary.
How can an atheist "swear"? Since the entire structure of the system is founded on a belief in God, this creates a paradox.
Religion is an intensely personal issue between a human being and God.
It is also the glue that holds our Society together. I've done much research regarding the bonds of society, and much of it's cohesion and practicality is the consequence of believing in Divinity. Attempts to form functional atheist societies have been abject failures. Not only have they been failures, some of them have been horrific disasters, such as Russian and Chinese communism.
There should be no religious tests for public office, and should never have been, under this Constitution.
There should be no religious tests for Federal offices, but the States were always entitled to do as they pleased. Let's keep our history accurate, and let's also keep our understanding of it accurate.