Original Intent and the 1st Amendment
This is pretty strong stuff by today's standards. From Justice Joseph Story's commentaries on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. § 1866. The real difficulty lies in ascertaining the limits, to which government may righttnlly go in fostering and encouraging religion. Three cases may easily be supposed. One, where a government affords aid to a particular religion, leaving all persons free to adopt any other; another, where it creates an ecclesiastical establishment for the propagation of the doctrines of a particular sect of that religion, leaving a like freedom to all others; and a third, where it creates such an establishment, and excludes all persons, not belonging to it, either wholly, or in part, from any participation in the public honours, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities of the state. For instance, a government may simply declare, that the Christian religion shall be the religion of the state, _____________________________ 1 See Burlemaqui, Pt. 3, ch.