A Problematically Practical Nation
As a history teacher, I carry a sacred obligation to take obscure, seemingly insignificant details from the past and try to make them engaging to a modern audience. According to my students, I have a pretty solid hit rate. I do, however, control their grades; it is therefore possible they are just being nice. Now I have to give this a go with an audience that might be a bit less charitable. Diving headlong out of the more interesting realm of the personal faith of one of America’s most influential founding fathers, I now turn our attention to an obscure treaty that the United States made with a bunch of pirates. Stick with me on this; I promise there’s a point.
In the earliest decades of its existence, the United States faced a very serious problem. The Barbary Coast pirates—a group of mostly Muslim sailors who operated out of North Africa—regularly waylaid traders in the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to independence, soon-to-be Americans did not worry much about these scallywags thanks to the power and protection of the British Navy. After the American Revolution, however, merchants from the newly United States were on their own, and our navy was nowhere near as capable of protecting our trade as our former friends across the pond. Barbary Pirates routinely assaulted American vessels, disrupting trade at a time when the United States desperately needed money, and carrying American citizens into slavery. This last point was particularly problematic for our nascent nation, as any country worth its salt needed to show they could protect their citizens, wherever they may roam.
To resolve this crisis and attempt to salvage our international reputation, the United States experimented with a variety of solutions. While we would eventually wage two successful wars against the Barbary Pirates, we first attempted diplomacy. Thus we come to the obscure document promised above: the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, commonly known as the Treaty of Tripoli. Here, it becomes very important that we remember that most of the Barbary Pirates—including those in Tripoli—were Muslim (“Musselmen” in the parlance of the day). The negotiations surrounding the treaty suggest that these followers of Islam were concerned over the rumored Christian nature of the United States, and the effect supposed religious differences might have on the ability for the two countries to come to an accord.
In fairness, I want to acknowledge here the presence of an international reputation for Christianity within the United States, only twenty years after its founding. Whether this was an inherited status applied to Americans given their European heritage, or something for which the United States was actually known at that time is not clear from this document. However, rather than taking this as proof of an explicitly Christian United States this close to the nation’s founding, I wonder if this reputation does not merely affirm a pattern we still see today: the United States is widely known (especially internationally) as a Christian nation, regardless of how much (or little) the nation and her people actually align with the will of Jesus and the values of his coming Kingdom.
This conclusion feels likely given the text of the treaty itself, particularly its most-cited section, 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.”
“Not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”: I struggle to imagine a more direct refutation of our nation’s supposedly inherent connection to the Kingdom of God. Lest we think this was the work of some rogue diplomat pushing a personal agenda, we should note that this treaty—including Article 11—was unanimously accepted by the United States Congress, before being signed into law by President John Adams[1]. This, then, was not some obscure text that did not represent the will of the American people. Congress and President Adams could have rejected it if they believed it betrayed some great tenet of our nation’s founding; they did not. Our nation’s leaders—founding fathers among them—seemed to believe Christianity was either not an essential component of American society, or at least not important enough to stand in the way of a trade agreement that might otherwise have collapsed due to differences of faith.
It bears noting that some resisted this willingness to deny the supposedly Christian foundation of the United States. Adams’ Secretary of War, James McHenry, claimed he “said...at the time” of the treaty’s approval, that “the Senate...ought never to have ratified the treaty,” asking if our nation was not founded on the Christian faith, “What else was it founded on?” He considered Article 11 to be “trampling upon the cross,” and lamented that the author was never reprimanded “for this outrage upon the government and religion.”[2] It seems that at least McHenry felt more strongly about the nation’s allegiance to God. Yet given the treaty’s passage, McHenry was unwilling or unable to sufficiently convince others to reverse this apparent betrayal what he considered of America’s founding principles.
This dissent, however, actually serves to reinforce the point I’m trying to make. Neither McHenry’s letter nor Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli are truer expressions of the nature of the United States in its earliest decades. They both represent some of our nation’s first steps; they both speak to the values of our country and its relationship to God. The presence of these two documents, then, shows that the supposedly Christian nature of the United States was a matter of debate, even just twenty years after the birth of our nation. An entire Congress believed our devotion to God was either nonexistent, or unimportant enough to prove an obstacle to international diplomacy. Other American leaders considered this dismissal of Christianity an affront to our country’s foundation. Whoever we might be inclined to believe, we can all see the debate taking place.
Even with a couple brief examples, I believe we have a great deal to consider regarding what many believe to be the inherit link between our nation and Christianity. Jefferson’s misunderstanding of Jesus raises serious questions on the importance of our Lord to the founding philosophies of this nation. Further, most of our government was willing to reject any official association with Jesus if it meant making what we considered a necessary deal. It is far from safe for us to assume our country was always desired to align itself with our God.
Thankfully, I don’t consider it a problem to doubt my nation’s relationship with God. I don’t need the United States to be a Christian nation; I just need to follow Jesus, and try to help everyone I can do the same. Next week, we’ll explore why its so helpful to free ourselves from this ultimately fruitless debate over the values that shaped our nation. After all, the less we obsess over our country, the more prepared we will be to fully worship our Lord.
Footnotes:
[1]: “Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1805 Wednesday, June 7, 1797.” Accessed July 2, 20201. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(ej001383)):
[2]: “James McHenry to John Adams, September 26, 1800”, in Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams: Edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, Volume 2, ed. George Gibbs, William Van Norden, Printer, 1846. p.421.