Utah didn't really have any serious prospects of entering the Union until after the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified (if they had, they'd have gotten in -- the Republicans, anticipating the need to make a few Constitutional amendments after the war, were predisposed to admit as many new free states as possible), so that example is beside the point.
I made the counterpoint:
-- State sponsored religions were sort of 'grandfathered in' for the original States. -- But look at the trouble Utah had trying to enter the Union while 'respecting' the Mormon religion. Took Utah 40 years to gain statehood.
Utah didn't really have any serious prospects of entering the Union until after the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified ---, so that example is beside the point.
Well, the Mormons were serious about entering the Union as a religious State:
"-- They applied for statehood in 1849, 1856, 1862, 1872, 1882, and 1887, without success.
The major prohibiting issue was the Mormon practice of polygamy. The political future of Utah became tied to the polygamy issue when the Republicans inserted in their 1856 platform the promise to eliminate in the territories the "twin relics of barbarism" — slavery and polygamy.
There would be no statehood for Utah as long as polygamy was practiced. --"