> 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.
>
Yes. Baptists used to get beat up by Episcopalians, as I hear it told. It's also the Baptists fighting with the Congregationalists in Mass.
> Massachusetts, at that
> time (and on to the 1820s) had the
> Congregationalists as its official state
> church. Other states also had established
> churches too.
>
As I understand it, Massachusetts was the last holdout, abandoning the setup in 1833, but I admit I don't know dets, and looking at teh wikipediaz didn't help. It sounds like others here might know more.
> 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.
>
I gather from teh wikipediaz<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#United_States_of_America>that you're thinking of a 1947 case in which the SCOTUS understands the fourteenth amendment as embodying/extending the first amendment. But by this time I don't believe there are any more established churches anywhere. The case Emerson v BoE was about tax funding for private religious schools.
j