Yes.
Saint Ding, the First Amendment is under the Bill of Rights. It’s about INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. The First Amendment provides constitutional protection for certain individual liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the press, and the rights to assemble and petition the government.
Every state had to respect the individual liberties in the First Amendment including freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the press, and the rights to assemble and petition the government.
You are saying states can ignore this if they wanted to. That is absurd.
I think you need to learn some history.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 states the following qualifications for holding the office of governor, “no person shall be eligible for this office, unless . . . he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion.” The following oath was also required, “I do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth.”
From the Delaware constitution: “Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust . . . shall . . . also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit” ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
In the “Fundamental Constitution for the Province of East New Jersey”, drafted in 1683, religious liberty was upheld, and every civil magistrate was required to affirm this by law and swear a binding to Jesus Christ. Following this requirement we read: ‘Nor by this article is it intended that any under the notion of liberty shall allow themselves to avow atheism, irreligiousness, or to practice cursing, swearing, drunkenness, profaneness, whoring, adultery, murdering, or any kind of violence."
The New Hampshire constitution of 1784 “recognized ‘morality and piety’ are ‘rightly grounded on evangelical principles’ State officeholders – governor, senators, representatives, and members of Council- must be of the ‘protestant religion’”
The 1776 Constitution of North Carolina in Article XXXII states, “No person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.” This provision remained in effect until 1876.
The 1778 Constitution of South Carolina declares “That all persons and religious societies who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is to be publicly worshipped, shall be tolerated. The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of the State.”
“Even in the fundamental law of the Province of Rhode Island, best known for the religious dissension of its founder Roger Williams, “Christian purpose is expressly stated and a particular form of Christianity (Protestantism) was required as a qualification for office”
