[billbears]

So I guess we just wipe out that facts that several of the respective states after the signing of the Constitution had established state churches? And that some of those states required taxes, as much as 5%, to be paid to maintain those churches as late as the 1820s. And the fact that several of the respective states still require state leaders to have a belief in God Almighty before being sworn in?

In Barron v. Baltimore (1833), the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights limits the federal government, not the states. Connecticut had an established church until 1818, and Massachusetts until 1833.

Is that the kind of religious morality that you're against legislating? Seems the Founders and the immediate generation following thought differently

[Notwithstanding]

I am required to argue for this side as an academic exercise.

I am very familiar with (and glad you point out) that the Constitution actually prohibited ONLY federal state religion similar to a "Church of England".