At Razor's suggestion, here goes a try at calmly discussing Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli and whether it supports, or perhaps compels, the conclusion that the United States of America is not a Christian nation. "Treaty of Tripoli" gives over 40,000 Google hits and I'll leave it to everybody to look up all they want and decide for themselves. The only links I post are to the originals of the Treaty.
My view is that the US is NOT a Christian nation, just a free nation that happens to have a lot of people who are of that faith, but that the Treaty of Tripoli, whichever version is correct, is not evidence for or against any Christian origin of or influence over the early government of the United States.
I'm not going legal, I'm just pasting the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
This is too long to paste:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/di...y/bar1796t.htm
The entire treaty as Joel Barlow translated it--maybe not accurately--from the Arabic original is there, dated 03 Jun 1797. And here's the relevant part of the Treaty of Tripoli, that the Senate duly ratified, and on 10 June 1797, President Adams signed:
ARTICLE 11.
As the government of the United States of America 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 Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan 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.
Since any treaty of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and here's this treaty that says flat-out "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion," then voila-- the USA is not a Christian Nation. Quite a lot of secularists and skeptics, and Neal Boortz whatever he is, quote the Treaty, the Supremacy Clause, and tell you that together they mean the US is not a Christian nation. End of story. End of debate.
Or not. Now go back to the First Amendment, which starts:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ...
This is the Establishment Clause. It does not say "Congress shall keep church and state separate." The phrase "separation of church and state" is NOwhere in the Constitution. What the government canNOT do is establish a religion. This is true even if the government establishes a religion but doesn't MAKE you follow it; the establishment alone is the problem.
... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
This is the Free Expression Clause. You can BELIEVE anything you want or nothing at all. You can DO almost anything you want to express that belief, so long as it doesn't collide with the Establishment Clause. But hold that thought.
Back to the Supremacy Clause: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." Since the US's ability to make laws and treaties comes from the Constitution, no law or treaty can stand against the Constitution.
It seems to me that Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli canNOT declare the US to be NOT a Christian nation, any more than it can declare the US to BE a Christian nation, or Buddhist nation, or Frisbeterian nation. However, I don't think you even have to get to the constitutional question. Here's the translation of the ORIGINAL IN ARABIC that "our Lord and Master the exalted Lord Yussuf Pasha of Tripoli" agreed to on 04 Nov 1796:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/di...y/bar1796e.htm
Scroll down to Article 11, and you read:
The eleventh article of the Barlow translation has no equivalent whatever in the Arabic.
So the Mooselimbs never agreed that the US Government was not founded on Christianity! Then how in the wide world of sports did Article 11 get into the American version? Answer, as far as I can tell and as far as even the secularists admit: nobody knows. Maybe Joel Barlow, very much a secularist and opponent of any kind of government connection with religion, stuck it in there himself. By all accounts he was a swell guy and the Henry Kissinger of his day, writing many books and doing a lot of good, but he was only human. Since he was the one who translated it for the Senate, and probably not a lot of other Arabic translators were around to check up on him, it's not impossible that he just pencil-whipped it to match his own preferences.
The secularists will then come back and say, correctly, that the Senate ratified the whole thing without a peep, and that at least some newspapers published the entire text, Article 11 and all, without anybody saying boo or writing a single letter to the editor. I say first, the Barbary Pirates problem had gotten so out of hand that probably nobody was much inclined to delay a solution. What would they have done, tell Joel Barlow to ship back over there and renegotiate it? Remember, no online document correction, no telegraph, no telephone--the government had to be able to count on its diplomats to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth, which Barlow apparently didn't.
Second, no agreement procured by fraud can be valid, and since the other side didn't agree to that language and SOMEbody therefore slipped it in later and presented it to the Senate as what everybody agreed to, Article 11 is and always has been utterly meaningless.
And anyway, the 1797 treaty didn't last long. In 1801 the Mooselimbs on the other side demanded more tribute than the treaty gave them. Tobias Lear negotiated a new treaty in 1805, without any mention of "in no sense founded on the Christian Religion," that superseded the first one, and that was the end of the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 or not. Then the Mooselimbs welshed on THAT treaty, and then the War of 1812 came along, and then the Second Barbary War and ANOTHER treaty in 1815, ALSO without the "in no sense founded on the Christian Religion" stuff. Joel Barlow apparently had nothing to do with these later treaties.
Now if the Senators of 1797 were as Christian as some claim they were, I think some of them would have squawked about Article 11 even if they ended up voting for it for practical reasons. But then, if those guys were as secular as others claim they were, I think they would have specially pointed out Article 11 as something to take note of. Instead, the Treaty remained very obscure for a long, long time. I think that the overriding factor in passage of the Treaty was that SOMEthing had to be done about Mooselimb piracy and terrorism, and that was what the Treaty was for. I can't see how anybody on either side can seriously argue that anything in or not in any treaties of that time can tell us anything meaningful about whether or not Christianity was the basis of our system of government.
All of this is only my opinion and anybody with different opinions based on fact and law might well be able to change mine.
Hybrid Mode
