Quote of the day

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States." --Thomas Jefferson

The last two sentences are interesting. If I'm reading them correctly, Jefferson was saying that state governments *could* make laws respecting an establishment of religion. In short, states could have official state religions. Only the federal government could not. This goes back to the phrasing of the First Amendment which starts with "Congress shall make no law...." This restricts this prohibition to the federal government. Others of the first ten amendments are blanket prohibitions. For example, the Second Amendment doesn't say that "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed by Congress."

Of course, I would say it's a bad thing for *any* government at any level to have an official religion. And I expect that the constitutions of most, if not all, of the states have similar language to the First Amendment (haven't read them all, don't know for sure).