America is a Christian nation

Regarding: Article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli as proof the United States is not a Christian nation:

The Founders themselves openly described America as a Christian nation; however, they did include a constitutional prohibition against a federal establishment. Religion was a matter left solely to the individual States.

Therefore, if Article 11 is read as a declaration that the federal government of the United States was not founded on the Christian religion, it is not a repudiation of the fact that America was considered a Christian nation.

While discussing the Barbary conflict with Jefferson, President Adams, who signed the treaty, declared: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were…the general principles of Christianity… I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature.”

Additionally, official correspondence of General William Eaton, who led the military expedition against Tripoli, confirms that the conflict was a Muslim war against a Christian America.

Writing to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Eaton explained, “Taught by revelation that war with the Christians will guarantee the salvation of their souls, and finding so great secular advantages in the observance of this religious duty [the secular advantage of keeping captured cargoes], their [the Muslims’] inducements to desperate fighting are very powerful.”

Numerous documents confirm that the Barbary conflict was always viewed as one between Christian America and Muslim nations.

More evidence: a 10-year study that analyzed more than 15,000 political writings from the Founding Era, with the goal of identifying the specific sources cited during debates in the establishment of American government, found one source of inspiration for the Founders’ ideas cited four times more often than Montesquieu or Blackstone and twelve times more than Locke. This source was the Bible, accounting for more than 34 percent of the direct quotes in the political writings of the Founding Era.

Margot Holman