“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” as in the Church of England.
“or prohibit the free exercise thereof” is the rest of the First Amendment regarding religion.
“Separation of church and state” is in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson it’s not in the Constitution.
But again Jefferson didn’t want the USA having that King linked State linked Church of England.
Those are the facts of the matter.
The rewrite of the First Amendment started with Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 “Everson” decision.
Black did not want state resources supporting Catholic schools.
In the 1920’s Black was involved in Alabama with the KKK.
The Klan was anti-Roman Catholic among other things.
Without going back and reading it, just off the top of my head, I thought it said that the government could not establish a religion.
No; the phrase in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists is “wall of separation between church and state”.
The USSR twisted that many years later, declaring in their constitution: “In the USSR, the church is separated from the state and the school from the church.”
Re: 7 - “The rewrite of the First Amendment started with Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 “Everson” decision.
Black did not want state resources supporting Catholic schools.
In the 1920’s Black was involved in Alabama with the KKK.”
That may have been what AJ Black wanted, his Majority Opinion in Everson was counter to his personal beliefs, ostensibly because he was a generally a textualist.