What does the Treaty of Tripoli say and why does it matter for the Christian‑nation debate?
Executive summary
The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli—ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams—contains Article 11 declaring that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,” language that was designed to reassure a Muslim Barbary state and to insulate commerce from religious hostility [1] [2]. That sentence has become a touchstone in the long-running debate over whether the United States was intended to be a “Christian nation,” but its importance depends on treaty context, original purpose, and later uses by opposing camps [3] [4].
1. What the Treaty of Tripoli actually says
The operative text most cited is Article 11: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” followed by assurances that the U.S. holds “no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen” and that religious differences should not interrupt harmony between the two states; this wording appears in the English text ratified by the Senate in 1797 [2] [5].
2. Why those words were included—diplomacy, commerce, and piracy
The treaty was one of several Barbary agreements intended to protect American shipping from North African corsairs through payments and diplomatic arrangements, and Article 11 reads as a practical assurance to a Muslim government that the United States would not treat Tripoli as an enemy for religious reasons—language shaped by the commercial and security context, not a constitutional declaration of domestic law [1] [6].
3. How historians and legal sources treat the treaty in the Christian‑nation debate
Scholars and institutional sources routinely cite Article 11 as evidence that federal government actors were willing to assert a secular posture in foreign relations, and the treaty has become a staple reference by advocates of separation between church and state; the Library of Congress and academic treatments note its repeated invocation in debates about the religion clauses of the Constitution [7] [3].
4. Contested translations, textual quirks, and the counterarguments
Critics and some conservative scholars argue that the treaty is being misread—pointing to the Arabic manuscript, questions about translation, or selective quoting that truncates the sentence—and claim the provision was a narrow diplomatic reassurance rather than a sweeping statement about national identity; proponents of the Christian‑nation idea have argued the clause is out of context or incorrectly punctuated when used as broad proof against a Christian founding [4] [8] [9].
5. The treaty’s legal weight and limits as proof
Legally, the treaty is a ratified international agreement and reflects the executive and Senate view in 1797, but it is not a constitutional amendment or Supreme Court ruling on establishment; courts and commentators have cited the treaty among many “organic utterances” illuminating early federal attitudes, yet it is one piece of a larger, contested body of evidence about founding-era intent [7] [4].
6. Why it still matters in modern public argument
Article 11 matters because it is succinct, contemporaneous, and politically potent: secularists use it to rebut claims that the U.S. government was meant to be an official Christian establishment, while opponents frame it as a diplomatic aside that cannot overturn cultural or judicial arguments for American Christianity; both sides therefore invoke the treaty selectively to support broader constitutional and cultural positions [3] [4].
7. Bottom line: persuasive but not dispositive
The Treaty of Tripoli is persuasive evidence that federal negotiators and the Senate in 1797 were comfortable declaring, in a diplomatic instrument, that the United States was not “founded on the Christian Religion,” but the statement’s original diplomatic purpose, translation questions, and the broader legal-historical record mean it is a strong rhetorical and historical data point rather than a standalone legal refutation or affirmation of the Christian‑nation claim [2] [4] [3].