It should be kept in mind that the anti-establishment clause only applied to the Federal government. Back then, the states could, and many did, have their own established churches. For example, in Virginia, the Episcopal church was the official state church. That remained the case, until Jefferson and Madison successfully led a campaign, strongly supported by the Baptists, to disestablish it. Massachusetts, at that time (and on to the 1820s) had the Congregationalists as its official state church. Other states also had established churches too. I believe that it was only in the twentieth century, that the SCOTUS began to apply the anti-establishment clause to the states, although by then, almost every state constitution had some sort of anti-establishment clause in it.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Texas school board drops Jefferson, adds Calvin Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:58:56 -0400
On Mar 18, 2010, at 9:16 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> So does anyone know the history of the anti-establishment clause?
> Was this an elitist imposition on a religious mass or a widely held
> opinion?
Actually, neither. Every Christian sect, knowing in its bones what Christianity was all about, needed protection from all the others, each of whom would gladly establish itself as the state's religion if it had the chance.
Shane Mage
> Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are
> appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only
> offering acceptable is silence.
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