The Tripoli Treaty, unanimously approved by the Senate and signed into law by President John Adams on June 10, 1797, between the US and the Barbary States, specifically states that the US is NOT a Christian nation. At that time, the US government was still dominated by those who are today referred to as the “Founding Fathers”. Article 11 of the treaty has been interpreted as an official denial of a Christian basis for the U.S. government. Article 11 reads:
Art. 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 Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] 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.
John F. Kennedy, on September 12, 1960, addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. In that address he stated:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
Separation of church and state was enshrined in the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
What the religious radicals don’t tell people, and what, tragically, many Americans apparently don’t know, is that when it comes to determining what the laws of the United States mean, the only document that matters is the Constitution, a completely secular document, that contains no references to God, Jesus or Christianity.
Now we have Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan committed to overturning the Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decisions through a constitutional amendment that defines life as beginning at conception.
They are allowed to believe that. YOU are allowed to believe that. I am allowed to believe that. But no one is allowed to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of America.
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