Back when the Constitution and Bill of Rights was written most of the states feared the bible thumpers up in New England (except Rhode Island) and didn't want to see our system replicated.
There was no seperation between the Congregational Church and the State of Connecticut until our new state consitution in 1818.
Prior to that membership in, and payment of ecclestical taxes to support, was mandatory unless you could show you belonged to another Christian church; failure to pay taxes or conform with the regulations of the Congregational Church would see a constable hauling you before a justice of the peace or higher court. Yes, you're reading that right -- if the Church passed a ecclestical law, the State enforced it for them.
And you couldn't just establish a Christian Church; it still had to be approved by the Congregational Ministers from the county in which it was to be located, so if they did not approve of that particular flavor of Baptists, or they thought they already had enough Anglican churches, they could refuse to allow the church to be formed.
Rhode Island was founded by people already kicked out of the Congregational Church, so they did not have the state and church be one as it was in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; from New York south other citizens of the U.S. were quite leery of this New England way.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" goes both ways -- Congress can neither regulate nor enforce religous views. The founding fathers, by and large, did fear the Church becoming involved with the State; they saw the intertwining in the New England states that made them uncomfortable, and they had just rebelled from a nation where the King was the head of Church & State.
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Today's Featured Article - History of the Nuffield Tractor - by Anthony West. The Nuffield tractor story started in early 1945. The British government still reeling from the effects of the war on the economy, approached the Nuffield organization to see if they would design and build an "ALL NEW" British built wheeled tractor, suitable for both British and world farming.
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