In 1776: 9/13 States had Confessional Establishment Churches 13/13 State Constitutions enforced Religious Observance Blasphemy/Sabbath Laws were the Norm Public Education was Protestant Bill of Rights only restrained to the Federal Government-1791 Mere acknowledgment: Massachusetts (1780) opened by invoking “the great Legislator of the universe.” Virginia’s Declaration of Rights spoke of duty to the Creator. Oath/belief requirements: Delaware (1776) required officeholders to profess faith in God and the Trinity. Pennsylvania required acknowledging God and the divine inspiration of scripture. Religious tests favoring Protestantism: North Carolina, New Jersey, and others barred non-Protestants (and sometimes anyone denying God) from office. Actual establishments: South Carolina (1778) went furthest, declaring the Protestant Christian religion the established religion of the state. Roughly 11 of the original states (plus Vermont) had some religious qualification for holding office in their founding-era constitutions. The exact count depends on how strictly you define a “test,” but the basic picture is well settled. The states that had religious tests included: Delaware (1776) – the most explicit, requiring officeholders to profess belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the divine inspiration of scripture (a Trinitarian test, removed in 1792). Pennsylvania (1776) – required acknowledging God and the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. North Carolina (1776) – barred anyone who denied God, the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of scripture. New Jersey (1776), Georgia (1777), South Carolina (1778), New Hampshire (1784) – Protestant tests. Maryland (1776) and Massachusetts (1780) – Christian tests (Maryland’s required a declaration of Christian belief; Massachusetts required officeholders to declare belief in the Christian religion). Vermont (1777) – a Protestant test plus belief in God. The notable exceptions—states that did not impose a religious test for office—were Virginia (1776) and New York (1777). Connecticut and Rhode Island kept governing under their colonial charters rather than writing new constitutions in this period, so they sit outside the count. Most of these tests favored Protestantism specifically, so they excluded Catholics, Jews, and often non-Trinitarian Christians—they weren’t a generic “belief in God” requirement. Second, the federal framers deliberately went the other way: Article VI of the U.S. Constitution bans religious tests for federal office, which was a conscious break from the state practice. Over the following decades, states dropped or loosened their tests, and in 1961 the Supreme Court (Torcaso v. Watkins) held that states can no longer require a religious belief for public office. Man.. that’s a LOT of Christian sounding stuff for a nation that “never” was a Christian nation 🤷🏼‍♂️