The Founding Fathers said the same thing, many of them. Sorry. You are wrong.
This is utter falsehood and I will prove it : Founding Fathers of the USA meant for Separation of Church and State to be ABSOLUTE.
ONE
the phrase “separation of church and state” is not even found in the Constitution! (Thomas Jefferson used the term in a private letter to reassure the Baptists that the government would not interfere in the free exercise of their religious beliefs [Jefferson, 1802]) -- note : State won't interfere, not the other way around !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TWO
(Annals of Congress, 1789, pp. 440ff.). The facts of the matter are that by their use of the term “religion,” the Framers had in mind the several Protestant denominations. Their concern was to prevent any single Christian denomination from being elevated above the others and made the State religion—a circumstance that the Founders had endured under British rule when the Anglican Church was the state religion of the thirteen colonies. They further sought to leave the individual States free to make their own determinations with regard to religious (i.e., Christian) matters (cf. Story, 1833, 3.1873:730-731). The “Father of the Bill of Rights,” George Mason, actually proposed the following wording for the First Amendment, which demonstrates the context of their wording:
[A]ll men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others (Rowland, 1892, 1:244, emp. added).
THREE
The Constitution recognizes STATES RIGHTS
he average American would be startled to know that of the original eleven state constitutions (omitting Connecticut), seven explicitly required office holders to be of the Protestant religion (i.e., Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). Maryland’s constitution required a belief in the Christian religion. The constitutions of Delaware and Pennsylvania required a belief in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. While the Virginia and New York constitutions did not mandate an oath, they spoke of “Christian forbearance” and “no one denomination of Christians” above another (“State Constitutions,” n.d.).