Elf Sternberg

Actually, there are very good reasons. And when the US Constitution was written (and the Bill of Rights set up) those reasons were a *lot* more recent.

It hadn't been that long since Britain had taxed Catholics. And possibly others who didn't belong to the Church of England. And the taxes were deliberately intended to be discriminatory and at least somewhat painful.

So unless you can find a way to make the taxes impact Big Religion and small covens (or whatever) equally, you have to not tax any religion.

If you don't you *will* find the mainstream religions doing there damndest to tax the "oddball" ones out of existence.