Treaty of Tripoli

That's going to be about how did the colonists, who are not homogenous in their thinking, they had different views, How are they influenced? And really the beginning is the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, throwing a wrench into the works of the Catholic Church in Europe that resorted in decades of war and millions of death.

And the outcome is, of the um the 30 years war at least was a treaty um and the treaty do you think they reached the treaty the uh negotiation uh for to end the war and said you know what we gotta stop mixing uh uh uh kings and popes because it's a bit so the outcome that's called the treaty of westphalia uh to end the 30 years war incrementalism here baby steps they said only okay we're going to let each individual country's ruler choose their religion but so you have this to have the church of england formed at that point and then what did they do the same thing that the catholic church did uh in in in basically imprisoning people who didn't follow that church and so this is the mindset of many of the early colonists uh you have you have separatists like the pilgrims say i'm we're our own church we don't want any more influence and then you had the puritans who thought the church of england was was the real deal and just wanted to quote purify it right and then um you had other groups who you know who just came up in your typical anglican church and they went off to university um and they became deists and it's and these are our founding fathers right the deists and we're going to learn a lot about deism um and you know learn about what the difference is between deism and christianity so when the conservative politicians say that the our founding fathers were christians and founded this as a christian age nation people are able to respond intelligently and know the difference And then we're going to talk about the court cases and our governing documents from the Declaration of Independence to the Treaty of Tripoli and a lot of documents that reference in one way or another how the early founders, what they thought of religion.

And then we're going to go through the 20th century and talk about the intermittent intermingling of politics and faith we talked about earlier about the long the long journey and how uh politics got caught up in republican politics um and each each step along the way so we're going to cover law we're going to cover faith and we're going to cover founders and we're going to cover politics and it'll be fun

I'm going to save you some time here in the audience some time, because we all know that the founding fathers were all born-again evangelical Christians.

But that's what it was.

That they, again, Treaty of Tripoli, they said specifically, you're just making that up.

Treaty of Tripoli, we've already debunked that.

That was a diplomacy-based

document to stop piracy.

John Adams.

Treaty of Tripoli.

Article 11.

Can I say one thing where I look smart? This is Treaty of

And the United States went to war in the Middle East, as we continue to do, and we'll come to that soon.

And they signed the Treaty of Tripoli to end that war.

Do you know what Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli that was unanimously ratified by the Senate and signed by John Adams, the second president, says?

Is that, that's the phrase that says in that the Republic is in no way founded on the Christian religion? The

government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

No.

The Treaty of Tripoli says specifically, that's reality.

They don't care about reality.

You might not like that.

They wanted a guarantee.

You're not gonna come in and mess with the culture, right? So the Treaty of Tripoli was drawn up to assure them.

Adams signed it.

There it is.

That's how, again, the other side tries to co-opt it where they're like, yeah, separation of church and state means that you know you can never pray even by yourself in a school and you're like that's not what it means right um that is what it means that america does not officially have a religion according to the constitution and they will not support one religion or a state church over another okay also the federal government uh is not allowed to have religious tests for federal office the constitution also forbids religious tests for uh again those federal offices Now, there's this other contentious thing that people bring up, so I need to give you some context because it's interesting.

There is what is called the Treaty of Tripoli, and it's right after America is founded.

And these Barbary pirates, like these Muslim pirates, are ransacking and pirating against American ships and because America's no longer part of England.

And so now they're kind of fair game for the Muslim pirates that are going on.

So that phrase is not in the Arabic.

However, this is what the guy left off, which I think is important.

When the English translation of the Treaty of Tripoli came before the government, it was unanimously ratified by the Senate and signed by John Adams with those words in it.

OK, so if you're saying, Zach, was there ever a time where the U.S. government read those words? The government, the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion and signed off on it officially.

And Thomas Jefferson and I think John Adams were having to pay tribute to the Muslim hierarchy at the time.

And then there was the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.

And then by the time we end up having the Marines, the 1805 Treaty of Tripoli changed.

So we've been at war with Islam for a very, very long time.

Spain booted the Islamists out, the Crusades.

What he was saying is, for the style of our government, a free constitutional republic, it can't survive a people who will not accept its premises of equal rights, the consent of the governed, equal protection under the law, that laws made by men are now accountable to men.

And then there's the Treaty of Tripoli, which was signed by President Adams and ratified by the Senate in 1797.

And in that, Article 11 states, quote, that the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

And then it has, quote, no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslim men.

It's not.

John Adams in the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, word for word said, America is in no way a Christian country.

These founding fathers did not believe in this stuff at all.

They had a lot of disagreements with the Trinity, with church.