The book analyzes the different positions on church and state of three Founding Fathers (James Madison, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) and contextualizes them in modern-day judicial conundra like school prayers or public funding of religious institutions.
[6] Meanwhile, in Law and History Review, Professor Mark D. McGarvie of the College of William and Mary argued that the ahistorical nature of the analysis was problematic, but that the book was nevertheless engaging.
[8] Professor Ellis M. West of the University of Richmond dismissed the book for lacking "balance and nuance", despite recognizing that Muñoz is correct to argue that "none of the Founders believed that religious liberty gave people the right to be exempt from obeying valid laws that unintentionally burden the exercise of their religion.
[10] Finally, in a review for the Journal of the Early Republic, Professor Mark Y. Hanley of Truman State University praised the book for "granting the founders their separate ways while acknowledging the continuing vitality of their political and philosophical ideas that can still offer Constitutional guidance in a new century.
"[11] Muñoz won a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to support his second book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses, published by the University of Chicago Press (2022).
In a review in First Things, Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell wrote, “Muñoz has written the best account in one place of the way in which the political theory of the founders regarding religious liberty connects with the delphic legal text of those clauses, which together state that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’”[13] According to Hoover Institution senior fellow Peter Berkowitz, “Vincent Phillip Muñoz provides a superb analysis of the natural-rights thinking that undergirded the founders’ understanding of the relation between religion and government….