Federal Disestablishmentarianism

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“When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, the First Amendment addressed the issue of an established church at the federal level, but this did not address the Christendom question. It has been made to address it by means of revisionist history, but originally it had nothing whatever to do with it. The Constitution forbade a Church of the United States on federal grounds, not on secular grounds. The document was dated in the year of our Lord 1789, and at the time it was adopted, nine out of the thirteen states had established churches on the state level. There was no sense in which the nonestablishment clause was violated by those states having official state religions” (Empires of Dirt, pp. 189-190).