Please look to this:
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention [in 1787] took ... only two modest steps with respect to religion, both of these being designed to avert
problems, not raise them. First, the delegates agreed that "no religious test" should ever be required of federal officeholders, and, second, that one could
"affirm" rather than "swear" in taking the oath of office--a clear concession to the tender consciences of Quakers. Other than that, however, the
Constitution was totally silent on the subject of religion: no national church, of course, but no national affirmations of faith, either, not even those of the
most generalized sort. (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 43.) |
