The Founding Fathers have played a leading role in this year’s election.
And now, an obscure 1797 treaty between the U.S. and Tripoli is being used to argue that they clearly didn’t see the U.S. as a Christian nation.
The debate has emerged anew on websites after Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, a Republican, questioned that the separation of church and state is in the U.S. Constitution. Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck said last year that he “disagreed strongly” with the idea before reversing course this week.
That set off the chattering classes.
Some rushed to defend Ms. O’Donnell, noting that while the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” it doesn’t specifically use the words “separation of church and state.”
Folks who support a separation of church and state, as the First Amendment’s establishment clause is generally interpreted, typically cite President Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 use of the metaphor to explain the framers’ purpose – something the courts have since followed.
Some also find support in a single sentence in the 1797 treaty between the U.S. and the Bey of Tripoli, leader of one of the Barbary States that practiced state-sanctioned piracy for hundreds of years. The piracy presented a particular challenge to the newly independent U.S.
Article XI reads:
“As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or any act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
That’s been seized upon as a clear statement of separation of church and state. The treaty was championed by President John Adams, and unanimously ratified in the Senate.
In recent years, as the idea of a Christian founding has gained momentum, a number of people arguing for a secular founding have used the 1797 treaty to counter them. Organizations such as the Wall Builders, which aims to promote the “godly foundation” of the U.S., have dissected the treaty’s meaning. More recently, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann last spring explicitly cited the treaty’s Article XI as an example of the country’s secular foundation—and as an early example of “outreach” to Muslims.
But not so fast.
The language isn’t in either the original, Arabic-language version of the treaty or the contemporaneous, Italian-language translation. It only appears in the English-language translation made by U.S. consul-general Joel Barlow, a translation so shoddy fellow diplomats at the time described it as “extremely erroneous.”
Nevertheless, that English-language version, complete with the mysterious Article XI, is what the Senate ratified and what President Adams publicly cheered: “And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all others citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.”
Article XI stands out from the other eight treaties signed with Barbary states; all focus on technical, maritime provisions rather than religion. Just two other treaties, from 1815 and 1816, contain the “no character of enmity” sections, with no reference to whether the U.S. is a Christian nation.
Today, the treaty seems to raise more questions than it answers. Perhaps it has less to do with the Founding Fathers and more to do with Mr. Barlow. After all, he was the one who helped Thomas Paine, of “Common Sense” fame, publish the antireligion tract “Age of Reason” a few years earlier in Paris.
Frank Lambert, a Purdue University history professor and author of books on religion in America and the Barbary Wars, says the lack of public outcry about the treaty at the time is telling. “Treaties are legal documents, but they also reflect the culture of their time,” he said in an interview. As much as Consul Barlow may have inserted his own language into the treaty, Mr. Lambert says, “He thought the general sentiment would endorse it.” And it did. The treaty ratification was the Senate’s third-ever unanimous vote.
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