In Leiter's secularised account, seminal thinkers such as John Locke advanced liberal, tolerationist views on purely utilitarian grounds. Locke defended freedom of conscience "not because there is some principled or moral reason to permit the heretics to flourish but because the State lacks the right tools to cure them of their heresy".

But if Leiter had simply read the opening paragraphs of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), he would have realised the implausibility of his secularisation campaign: "The toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion, is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind, as not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it, in so clear a light."

 Likewise, in a book on the relationship of Church and State, there is no treatment of James Madison and his signal contribution to the legal architecture governing these two realms — the First Amendment — which Leiter hopes to reconstruct. Ever mindful of the dangers of an oppressive state, Madison insisted upon the civic freedom of every individual to live out his obligations to the Creator. As he wrote in Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785): 

It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.

By elevating our spiritual and moral obligations to God above all others, Madison helped to enshrine the unique status of religion in America's legal regime. The Founders viewed religious liberty as the bedrock of civic and political freedom; as such, the state should think long and hard before it curtailed religious expression. As the social thinker Os Guinness has written, this principle has functioned as an "article of peace" by which the United States has accommodated its religious diversity while avoiding sectarian strife and preserving freedom. All of this history — all of the social and political progress made possible by religion's privileged place in the public square — is ignored by Leiter's cold rationalism.