The Original Purpose of the Establishment Clause

My semi-layman's understanding of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution is that it was intended not to create the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state, but rather as a states' rights provision intended to prevent the federal government from disestablishing official, state-supported, established churches. In the recent pledge case, Justice Thomas endorsed this view, calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider whether the Establishment Clause should be incorporated into the 14th amendment. This understanding of the Clause has been mocked in cert ain quarters. Stuart Buck has done yeoman service in pulling together a comprehensive list of mainstream legal scholars who also believe, as Yale law professor Stephen Carter puts it, that "we should therefore read the "Establishment Clause" as a states'- rights provision, as an allocation between the national and local sovereignties of the authority to create or to endorse an official church." Kudos.