Separation of Church and State in The United States - The Treaty of Tripoli

The Treaty of Tripoli

In 1797, the United States Senate ratified a treaty with Tripoli that stated in 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 tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or 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.

Because Article VI, clause 2 of the United States Constitution renders ratified treaties "the supreme Law of the Land", some argue that the Treaty of Tripoli confirms that the government of the United States was specifically intended to be religiously neutral. Several historians, both secular and religious, however, have argued against that claim. Historian Anson Phelps Stokes, for example, argued that the Treaty of Tripoli is the "only statement of any importance which we have found in the official documents of the United States which seems to deny specifically that the government was founded on the Christian religion." He also noted that "those who wished to deny that the United States as a government has any special regard for the Christian religion... almost invariably failed to call attention to the fact that the treaty was superseded, less than a decade later, by another 'Treaty of Peace and Amity,' signed in Tripoli June 4, 1805, in which the clause in question...is omitted."