It is true that the phrase is Jefferson's, but (like it or not) the activism was by the Supreme Court, not District Judge Jones.
The First Amendment says that there shall be no "establishment of religion" on a national level. The meaning of "establishment" historically is well known. It means a single state church, a single official church. The model the Founders were clearly thinking of was the Church of England, which at times the English monarchy had tried to foist on the American colonies as their official church.
No. The founders knew the history all too well. -- and much better than you.
They were quite aware of the strife of England's religious history:
Initially Roman Catholic, to Anglican Church, briefly Roman Catholic again, Anglican (again), Protestantism in the north, Charles I executed and the rise of Scottish Presbyterian, suppression of the Catholics and Anglicans, Charles II restored and the Anglican suppression of Roman Catholics and the Protestants (Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers and Methodists), ... and eventually the Act of Toleration that permitted the Protestant church(es) but still excluded Roman Catholics and Unitarians.
In light of this history, and hoping to avoid it; during the Convention in 1787, Charles Pinckney proposed the article to the Constitution:
. . .The Legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion, nor touching or abridging the liberty of the press [n]or shall the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus ever be suspended, except in case of rebellion or invasion.
The proposal was accepted without debate and sent to the Committee of Detail, but only the "writ of habeas corpus" clause was incorporated into the Constitution.
Two years later in the debate on the the "Bill of Rights", the subject came up again. Madison (who initially opposed any "Bill of Rights") offered:
"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed."
Mr. Sherman thought the amendment altogether unnecessary, inasmuch as Congress had no authority whatever delegated to them by the Constitution to make religious establishments; he would, therefore, move to have it struck.
Mr. Benjamin Huntington said that "he feared, ... that the words might be taken in such latitude as to be extremely hurtful to the cause of religion. He understood the amendment to mean what had been expressed by the gentleman from Virginia; but others might find it convenient to put another construction upon it."
After objection to the word "national" and more debate, Mr. Samuel Livermore revived Gen. Pinckney's article:
"Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience."
Mr. Madison withdrew his motion, and the question was then taken on Livermore's motion, and passed in the affirmative, thirty-one for, and twenty against.
The House committee merged the language of both Madison's and Livermore's proposal:
"Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience."
And in the Senate:
"Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion."
After conciliation in the conference committee, we got our present:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Thirty years later, in his commentaries, Justice Story wrote:
"The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals."
And we have Benjamin Franklin:
"When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support, itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one,"and
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England"
The debate was over shifting sectarian favor depending on which faction was in power. Distrusting future politicians, rather than allowing the possibility of support of any religion, The founders thought it best to exclude the subject from Congress altogether.
... and people who didn't like it were welcome to move to Rhode Island and Connecticut with Anne Hutchinson.
In other words, exiled. Interesting.
But there is nothing in the Constitution that would prevent them from reestablishing a religion in any state in the unlikely event that they chose to do so.
Other than the Fourteenth Amendment.
... and ARE CLEARLY NOT CONSERVATIVE on any of these issues.
One TRUE Scotsman ...
No, of course I don't like it, and neither does any other conservative. The Supreme Court has gone berserk over the past 50 or 60 years, and badly needs to be fixed.
And, yes, I am quite aware of the history you sketch. It has little or nothing to do with the meaning to the word "establishment" in the Constitution. We aren't writing books here, we are getting at the nub of the matter.
Frankly, it's sick to have people claiming to be conservatives celebrating the work of activist SCOTUS judges over the years.
Good post!