[azeotropic]

"The degree to which the founding fathers were religious is debatable. It would appear to be singular achievement for men of actual, deep faith to resist the temptation to recreate the sort of intertwined state and church typical of the time"

Considering that the sectarian violence of the English Civil War was still fresh in their minds, and that many of the States did have different official state churches (e.g. MA:Puritan, PA:Quaker, MD: Catholic), they all made a pragmatic compromise to prohibit the congress from establishing a federal religion or interfering with the state religions of any of the several states.

As an example, the original MA state constitution, written by Adams, makes the Congregationalist church the state religion, and guarantees state funding to construct a church in each town and pay a Congregationalist minister to preach there. That's why there is a quaint white wooden church in the center of each town in MA and ME (which was part of MA at the time).

Jefferson might have been a deist and his Democrats have always been more aligned with the spirit of the French enlightenment and revolution, but the Whigs/Federalists were most definitely not.