Frank B. Cross is known for his straightforward and direct approach to big questions, and this book is no exception. Indeed, this book launches a frontal attack on not one, but a series of weighty questions that have likely intimidated less ambitious scholars. In so doing, he unsettles conventional wisdom and opens productive avenues into the study of constitutions and religion that we will be traversing for years to come. Many of us take for granted the idea that the right to religious freedom should be protected in a free, democratic polity. Not Cross, who wonders why we would protect and privilege a religious basis for beliefs and identity over any other. Cross’s questions startle: Of how much social or material value is religious freedom, really? This is a provocative and arresting beginning, and it sets the stage for a set of empirical questions that he answers clearly and succinctly in subsequent chapters.