One Nation Under God?
While most of the legal community and even the general public tend toward Jefferson's view that the First Amendment erects a "wall of separation" between church and state, the reality is that the wording of the First Amendment constituted a limitation on the federal government to interfere with state prerogatives.
One faction, led by Fisher Ames, wanted the states left free to determine their own church-state relations. Some states, such as Ames's own Massachusetts, had an officially established and recognized church already, and they didn't want their status quo overridden or negated by an intrusive federal Congress.
Madison took a broader view of the subject, believing that a national church would only disrupt the unity of the country, given its religious diversity (albeit a diversity largely between different Protestant communities). Given the passionate commitment of Americans to their respective faiths, Madison understood that allowing one denomination an advantage nationally, via congressional intervention, could create enormous problems for the country both then and into the future. Thus, Madison campaigned for the First Amendment as a means of preserving patriotic unity and (in the words of early Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, a Madison appointee) excluding from the federal government "all rivalry among Christian sects."
According to Dr. James McClellan, legal scholar and longtime professor, neither Ames nor Madison intended the First Amendment to be a "declaration of governmental hostility toward religion, or even of government neutrality in the debate between believers and non-believers."
After all, states were free to establish their own official churches (Madison himself making it repeatedly clear that the First Amendment addressed only a "national religion"). Yet even the First Amendment didn't preclude the federal government from religion altogether. After all, the federal government still printed Bibles, called for public days of prayer and thanksgiving, and dispatched missionaries to the Indians at taxpayer expense.
There is admittedly a disconnect between Madison's early career and his reflections later in life, when it comes to this subject. Though he helped defeat a religious tax measure in Virginia in 1784, Madison felt no qualms throughout most of his life with government's endorsement of religion.
In 1776, Madison was a member of the committee that edited and approved George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, which contained a blatant endorsement of the Christian faith, while calling for religious freedom at the same time.
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