Upon studying this subject in school (under a professor who I believe was jewish)
What we learned reading the founding accounts... is consistent with this...
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Of course the "prevailing liberality" was not very liberal. The clause was hotly disputed in some states during the 1788–1789 struggle over ratification of the Constitution. The objection was simple: "Jews," "Turks," "infidels," "heathens," and even "Roman Catholics" might hold national office under the proposed Constitution. As more soberly expressed by Pennsylvanian Benjamin Rush: "many pious people wish the name of the Supreme Being had been introduced somewhere in the new Constitution." The Religious Test Clause was thus a focal point for reservations about the Constitution's entirely secular language.
Some defenders of the Constitution argued, in response, that a belief in God and a future state of reward and punishment could, notwithstanding the test ban, be required of public officers. On this interpretation, Article VI banned only sectarian tests, such as would exclude some Christians from office. Others asserted that the requirement that officers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution necessarily implied a religious commitment. (See Oaths Clause, Article VI, Clause 3.)
In the ratification debates, the defenders of the Constitution put forward two reasons for the religious test ban. First, various Christian sects feared that, if any test were permitted, one might be designed to their disadvantage. No single sect could hope to dominate national councils. But any sect could imagine itself the victim of a combination of the others. Oliver Ellsworth noted that if a religious oath "were in favour of either congregationalists, presbyterians, episcopalions, baptists, or quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any publick office; and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen." More importantly, the Framers sought a structure that would not exclude some of the best minds and the least parochial personalities to serve the national government. In his 1787 pamphlet, "An Examination of the Constitution," Tench Coxe wrote of the salubriousness of the religious test ban: "The people may employ any wise or good citizen in the execution of the various duties of the government."
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/6/essays/135/religious-test
What we learned reading the founding accounts... is consistent with this...
---
Of course the "prevailing liberality" was not very liberal. The clause was hotly disputed in some states during the 1788–1789 struggle over ratification of the Constitution. The objection was simple: "Jews," "Turks," "infidels," "heathens," and even "Roman Catholics" might hold national office under the proposed Constitution. As more soberly expressed by Pennsylvanian Benjamin Rush: "many pious people wish the name of the Supreme Being had been introduced somewhere in the new Constitution." The Religious Test Clause was thus a focal point for reservations about the Constitution's entirely secular language.
Some defenders of the Constitution argued, in response, that a belief in God and a future state of reward and punishment could, notwithstanding the test ban, be required of public officers. On this interpretation, Article VI banned only sectarian tests, such as would exclude some Christians from office. Others asserted that the requirement that officers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution necessarily implied a religious commitment. (See Oaths Clause, Article VI, Clause 3.)
In the ratification debates, the defenders of the Constitution put forward two reasons for the religious test ban. First, various Christian sects feared that, if any test were permitted, one might be designed to their disadvantage. No single sect could hope to dominate national councils. But any sect could imagine itself the victim of a combination of the others. Oliver Ellsworth noted that if a religious oath "were in favour of either congregationalists, presbyterians, episcopalions, baptists, or quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any publick office; and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen." More importantly, the Framers sought a structure that would not exclude some of the best minds and the least parochial personalities to serve the national government. In his 1787 pamphlet, "An Examination of the Constitution," Tench Coxe wrote of the salubriousness of the religious test ban: "The people may employ any wise or good citizen in the execution of the various duties of the government."
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/6/essays/135/religious-test