Last updated on: October 3, 2007 at 9:02 am
By
Ed Brayton
Chris Rodda, my indispensable Talk2Action colleague, has another post revealing false claims by the Christian Nation crowd, this time specifically about the 1797 treaty with Tripoli. This is the treaty negotiated under Washington and signed by John Adams. Article 11 of the treaty begins by saying, “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” This has led to some fanciful attempts to explain that text away by those who wish it wasn’t there.
The first part of Rodda’s examination of this treaty is here. She points out the common arguments used by the Christian nation crowd. They can’t deny that the words are there, of course, so they have to find some way of explaining it away, of claiming that they didn’t really mean it. Sometimes they claim that Article 11 was not found in the Arabic translations of the treaty, the one signed by the Muslim leader of Tripoli.
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