Hutson offers a concise and authoritative discussion of the relationship between church and state from America’s first settlements through the early nineteenth century. Hutson’s analysis of the philosophical and practical context for the First Amendment is particularly useful.

Levy, a leading Constitutional scholar, attacks recent legal and policy trends in arguing that the framers of the constitution intended a rigid wall of separation between church and state. He takes particular aim at "non-preferentialists" who argue that the establishment clause was intended to allow federal aid to religious institutions so long as it was directed impartially and not toward a particular church.