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The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance.

Many of these things were going on in the US after ratification without furor from Congress. Below is quoted from a column by M. Stanton Evans in Imprimis Magazine in 1995 (Full Link) Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

...In South Carolina, for example, the Constitution of 1778 said that “the Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed…the established religion of the state.” It further said that no religious society could be considered a church unless it agreed “that there is one eternal God and a future state of rewards and punishment; that the Christian religion is the true religion; that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are of divine inspiration.” South Carolina also asserted that “no person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.”

Similar statements can be gleaned from other state enactments of the period. The Maryland Constitution of 1776 decreed, for instance, “a general and equal tax for the support of the Christian religion.” New Jersey that year expressed its idea of toleration by saying that “no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right.” Massachusetts, in 1780, authorized a special levy to support “public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality”—a formula adopted verbatim by New Hampshire.

Official support for religious faith and state religious requirements for public office persisted well after adoption of the First Amendment. The established church of Massachusetts was not abolished until 1833. In New Hampshire, the requirement that one had to be Protestant to serve in the legislature was continued until 1877. In New Jersey, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold office until 1844. In Maryland, the stipulation that one had to be a Christian lasted until 1826. As late as 1835, one had to be a Protestant to take office in North Carolina; until 1868, the requirement was that one had to be a Christian; thereafter that one had to profess a belief in God.