Sandra Dodd

I was working on this page
http://sandradodd.com/art/titles/hollytitle
which has an unwieldy URL, but it makes sense for it to be where it is.

But in checking links from there (that is, in poking around from
there), I came to my friend Steve Muhlberger's blog. He's a history
professor in Ontario. As part of discussing a new U.S. Congressman
who's Moslem, he tells the following story, which would probably be a
big surprise to those (very) many conservative Christian
homeschooling parents (and curriculum writers) who assure their
children regularly that the U.S. is and always was "a Christian nation."

-------------------------------------------------------------

There's a long debate on this question of whether the USA is a
Christian nation. No one doubts that the vast majority of white
settlers in the 13 colonies were at least formally Christian, or that
the Angl0-Americans were formally Christian at the time of the
Revolution. But there was little invoking of a specifically Christian
God or of Jesus Christ in revolutionary rhetoric. Indeed in the
backwash of the Revolution state-supported Christian churches were
disestablished, and the First Amendment forbade the federal
government from favoring any specific religion.

One interesting document relevant to this debate is the US-Libya
treaty of 1797. The context as I understand it is this. There were
still "Barbary Pirates" in the Mediterranean, Muslims raiding
Christian shipping and occasionally Christian settlements (even in
Iceland!) and enslaving sailors and others. Christian countries paid
tribute to avoid such problems. But the new USA was not covered by
those treaties and was vulnerable to piratic action. Establishing
that the US would neither pay tribute nor allow its shipping to be
preyed upon on the excuse of religious warfare was an early priority
of the US government (see what you can find under "War with the
Barbary Pirates") . Both military and diplomatic action was taken. On
the diplomatic side we see the treaty with Libya which stated
(quoting from Juan Cole):

...the Government of the United States is in no
sense founded on the Christian religion.

In other words, holy war was no excuse for piracy against the United
States.

http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/blog.htm

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

halfshadow1

-That's true, People can read the Treaty of Tripoli
...http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/treatytripoli.htm to
learn that the founding fathers were not for a christian nation.-- In
[email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> I was working on this page
> http://sandradodd.com/art/titles/hollytitle
> which has an unwieldy URL, but it makes sense for it to be where it is.
>
> But in checking links from there (that is, in poking around from
> there), I came to my friend Steve Muhlberger's blog. He's a history
> professor in Ontario. As part of discussing a new U.S. Congressman
> who's Moslem, he tells the following story, which would probably be a
> big surprise to those (very) many conservative Christian
> homeschooling parents (and curriculum writers) who assure their
> children regularly that the U.S. is and always was "a Christian nation."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a long debate on this question of whether the USA is a
> Christian nation. No one doubts that the vast majority of white
> settlers in the 13 colonies were at least formally Christian, or that
> the Angl0-Americans were formally Christian at the time of the
> Revolution. But there was little invoking of a specifically Christian
> God or of Jesus Christ in revolutionary rhetoric. Indeed in the
> backwash of the Revolution state-supported Christian churches were
> disestablished, and the First Amendment forbade the federal
> government from favoring any specific religion.
>
> One interesting document relevant to this debate is the US-Libya
> treaty of 1797. The context as I understand it is this. There were
> still "Barbary Pirates" in the Mediterranean, Muslims raiding
> Christian shipping and occasionally Christian settlements (even in
> Iceland!) and enslaving sailors and others. Christian countries paid
> tribute to avoid such problems. But the new USA was not covered by
> those treaties and was vulnerable to piratic action. Establishing
> that the US would neither pay tribute nor allow its shipping to be
> preyed upon on the excuse of religious warfare was an early priority
> of the US government (see what you can find under "War with the
> Barbary Pirates") . Both military and diplomatic action was taken. On
> the diplomatic side we see the treaty with Libya which stated
> (quoting from Juan Cole):
>
> ...the Government of the United States is in no
> sense founded on the Christian religion.
>
> In other words, holy war was no excuse for piracy against the United
> States.
>
> http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/blog.htm
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>