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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the pre

• rayiner 2y ago
  That says that: 1) Congress cannot create an official national church or regulate the official state churches that existed at the time the First Amendment was written. (The term "establishment of religion" is not an old-timey way of referring to religiously-motivated laws, but instead refers to "established churches": https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/established-churches-in-early-america/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/established-churches...) 2) Congress cannot prohibit individuals from exercising their religion freely. Neither of those provisions prohibits the majority having religious motivations for otherwise-permissible laws. For example, the government can obviously commerce. If the majority wants to use the government's power over commerce to ban the sale of alcohol on Sundays, that's totally permissible. The fact that people's motivation for doing that is based on Christianity makes no difference.