are found in the decisions of the Supreme Court; (3) the accommodationists are correct that the Court in its decisions reflected a common cultural belief that "all religions are to be shown preference over non-religion" and that the free exercise clause was extended only to adherents to established and organized religious faiths and the free exercise clause embraced religious beliefs but not necessarily to religious-motivated actions which ran counter to prevailing sentiment; but also that (4) from the beginning of the Republic, a strong undercurrent existed which favored complete neutrality by the state in religious matters and at least some protection for freedom of conscience beyond the confines of established religions (3).
The Establishment Clause. Although a number of colonial legislatures subsidized religious institutions and although the dominant culture ethos incorporated Protestant beliefs and values, Hammond points out that church adherents were only about 17 percent of the colonial population and that Protestantism was fragmented among various sects (7). The Founding Fathers meant what they said in the Establishment Clause and intended that diverse religious belief were entitled to constitutional protection against claims of the State, and they opposed an established church at the national level. At the same time, Hammond says that "the dominant jurist of the first half of the nineteenth century, Joseph Story, saw no inconsistency in advocating Christianity as the model to be used by government in the promotion of morality" (25).
The strictures of the First Amendment were held not to be applicable to the states until after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed after the Civil War, and its religious clauses were not held to be applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment until Cantwell v. Connecticut and other decisions of the Court in the early 1940s. However, in the late 19th century,...