I wasn’t unaware of any of that.
But how exactly wasn’t the new government’s hand forced quite a bit by all the different faith groups that existed in America at the time?
Yes, the European nations mostly had established state churches, but the U.S. was made up of immigrants from many of those nations. How, then, could the new government even think to choose one Christian denomination, say, over all the others?
So the First Amendment Establishment clause didn’t just come out of thin air, but most likely just expressed the strong will of the people, and those who wrote the Constitution no doubt were well-aware of public opinion.
Over the centuries, it seems like, in a elitist fashion, we’ve reduced the first Americans to just a few people like Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc., and giving them all the credit for founding the nation.
And on what to do now, the question most often asked seems to be, “What did Jefferson personally believe?,” or “What did the Deist Founding Fathers personally believe?” Then there are comments like, “America was never a Christian nation. The Founders were deist.”
The Constitution wasn’t written in a vacuum, and it wasn’t just ideas imposed on the public, either.
You are speaking from abject, mordant stupidity. If our Founders had all agreed on something, it would have been done; not to mention the fact that early on, most of those living here, from Europe, were PROTESTANTS and mainly from what is today the UK, Holland, and Germany.
Our founders WERE a small group of the ELITE. Even uncouth Andy Jackson was a general.
Only a few CRAZIES claim that most FFs were "DIEISTS". Go find them and argue with them.