Thanks, Gfactor! I’ll pick up a couple of those.
I’ve always thought, in what I thought was a plain-text reading of the amendment, that “an establishment of religion” would be for example the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists, or even the Boy Scouts of America (that those groups/organizations are themselves the “establishments” being referred to). And therefore a prohibition against respecting one of these establishments would mean that the government can’t respect, or favor, any of them.
So I guess that’s not what they meant?
Utterly impossible to anyone who knows 18th-century English.
“respecting” == “having to do with”
“establishment” == “official government backing of religion, specifically, as the Church of England was and is in England”
Did anyone else notice that this article was so well researched it even has a reference by Agent 007?
Right. In fact, most of the establishment issues during the era involved appropriation of church taxes for distribution to an “established” church or churches. An example is the controversial proposed Bill **Establishing ** a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion (Emphasis added): A Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion
Madison responded to this proposal with his Memorial and Remonstrance
Against Religious Assessments: http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/madison_m&r_1785.html, in which he refers to the system described in the bill as an establishment.
Bond. James E. Bond, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23060921689219
They wouldn’t have said “establishment” if they meant “institution”.
An “establishment” is an act of having established something.
To affix a 10 Commandments plaque in a courthouse is to establish religion there. Once you’ve estalbished it, it becomes an establishment.
This assertion is naive in the extreme. It assumes two things: 1. an unchanging meaning for the word establishment, and 2. an unnuanced (and ahistorical) meaning for the phrase used “establishment of religion.”
The best source for understanding what the potential meanings for the phrase “respecting an establishment of religion” are as used in the Amendment when added in 1791 is contemporary writings. If you read those writings, you will find that, first, there was no agreement among the authorities at the time as to exactly what was meant by this phrase, and second, it certainly didn’t mean what you are asserting it meant. 
I’m another who found the piece very informative. Fine job.
The question itself wasn’t ignorant, it was the fact that the person was trying to claim outright what should be “obvious” and was completely wrong about it, as anyone who had ever read anything about it at all would have known.