"What business does the Government have passing a federal law respecting an establishment (the phrase "under God" in the Pledge) of religion, even if nobody is coerced into saying it?"
The short argument is that what Jefferson envisioned when he wrote the seminal Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom referred to the state's history of the Church collecting taxes, requiring attendance and marriage, and forbidding the existance of other churches(the Quakers for instance. They used to hang them in Philly and Boston and such. That's how many ended up in the Dismal Swamp area of Virginia and the Albemarle area of NE North Carolina.)
I don't recall from my reading that they spent much, or any, time discussing whether or not there was a God, only whether or not the state should require that everyone pay to support the church and attend.
Patrck Henry, among others, was FOR a state-sponsored church or churches. IOW, you can pick which church to give your money to BUT you HAVE to give. He was only human I suppose and made some mistakes.
John
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There is a lot of good information on the Colonial Williamsburg site. I mean, c'mon, the General Assembly created the new Parishes among other things.
"In colonial times, obligatory worship in a state church supported by tax monies was the law in Virginia, patterned after the Anglican (or Church of England) establishment in the mother country. But almost from the beginning, the establishment in Virginia differed from that in England. By the late seventeenth century, the power of the church in Virginia had come to rest with Virginia's ruling elite, who typically made up county courts, Anglican vestries, and the colonial government. Office-holding qualifications at all levels required Church of England affiliation. County courts and vestries handled nearly all governmental functions vital to everyday life. Justices exercised an amalgam of administrative, judicial, and ecclesiastical powers. They passed judgment in all manner of cases, including absence from Anglican church services, bastardy and adultery, and other moral offenses as defined in law. Parish vestries not only levied public taxes to pay the clergy and build and repair churches but also doled out support for poor orphans and other needy persons in their parishes. The General Assembly created new parishes and set ministers' salaries. And it spelled out the conditions under which dissenters were allowed to practice their religion.
Although many among the colonial elite supported a church establishment, they opposed centralization of church authority that would take authority to run church affairs out of their hands. Their hands-on management of church affairs taught them (just as service in the strong county court system did) that Virginians were capable, independent leaders. They therefore opposed a movement in the 1770s to secure a resident American bishop.
Dissent and Religious Toleration
By law colonial Virginians were members of the Anglican church, but in spite of church establishment, religious life in Virginia was not cut of whole cloth for long. Immigrants-Scots, Irish, English,Continental--brought religious diversity to the colony. Virginia officials chose to tolerate (in the legal sense) most non-Anglican Protestants. Legislation granted limited religious expression and practice to persons who did not accept the religious doctrines and ritual of the Church of England. The law required dissenters to notify the courts of their dissenting status. Dissenting ministers and their meetinghouses needed licenses from the General Court. Legal toleration provided dissenters a means, however cumbersome, by which they could legally worship outside the Anglican church, but it also disadvantaged dissenters by barring them from public office and by taxing them for support of the Anglican church. Moreover, the privilege of religious toleration could be withdrawn at any time."
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