Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli is the clause that declares “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion.”1Yale Law School. The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 – Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 The Senate ratified the treaty unanimously and without recorded debate in June 1797, and President John Adams signed it days later. The clause was in force for about eight years before a new treaty replaced it in 1805.
The Full Text of Article 11
Article 11 is a single sentence with three linked claims and a conclusion. It states that the U.S. government is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. It states that the nation has no character of enmity toward the laws, religion, or peace of Muslims (the treaty uses the term “Musselmen”). It states that the United States has never entered into any war or hostile act against any Muslim nation. From those three points, the article concludes that no religious pretext should ever interrupt the peace between the two countries.1Yale Law School. The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 – Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796
Why the Clause Was There
The purpose was diplomatic. The Barbary States along the North African coast — Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco — ran a system of state-sponsored piracy against Mediterranean shipping, and after independence American vessels lost the protection of the British navy. With no navy of its own in the early 1790s, the United States had to negotiate.
The treaty was signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and endorsed by Hassan Bashaw, Dey of Algiers, on January 3, 1797.2GovInfo. Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States of America, and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary Joel Barlow, the American Consul General in Algiers, oversaw the negotiations and produced the English text.
Article 11’s purpose was to tell Tripoli’s rulers that the young republic was not a successor to the European Christian powers that had waged religious wars against Muslim states for centuries. By separating American governance from Christianity as a state religion, the clause removed a possible religious pretext for conflict and made room for a straightforward commercial peace.
How the Senate Ratified It
President Adams submitted the treaty to the Senate on May 29, 1797. On June 7, the Senate voted to consent to ratification. Every senator present voted in favor, and no debate on any provision — including Article 11 — appears in the record. Nine senators were absent.3GovTrack.us. To Consent to the Ratification of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary Adams signed and proclaimed the treaty on June 10, 1797.1Yale Law School. The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 – Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796
The Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser printed the full twelve articles on June 17, 1797, so merchants and the public could read the terms. No significant contemporary backlash against the Article 11 language survives in the historical record.
The Arabic Manuscript Problem
The English text the Senate ratified does not match the Arabic original. The Arabic manuscript has no Article 11. Where Article 11 sits in the English between Articles 10 and 12, the Arabic instead contains a letter from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli on administrative matters. Hunter Miller, the State Department’s editor of treaties, described that letter as “crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant.”4Avalon Project. The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 – Treaty with Tripoli 1796 – Hunter Miller’s Notes
Miller, writing in 1930, called Barlow’s English translation “at best a poor attempt at a paraphrase or summary of the sense of the Arabic” and said “its defects throughout are obvious and glaring.”4Avalon Project. The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 – Treaty with Tripoli 1796 – Hunter Miller’s Notes How the Article 11 language ended up in the English version, in Miller’s words, “is a mystery and seemingly must remain so.” An Italian version prepared under James Cathcart, the American consul at Tripoli, existed as well; Cathcart called Barlow’s English text “extremely erroneous,” but his Italian translation was not consulted during ratification and was not rendered into English until 1930.
No surviving records explain whether Barlow inserted the Article 11 language deliberately, improvised it while translating, or worked from an intermediary text that has since been lost. What is settled is that the English version is the version the Senate approved, Adams proclaimed, and the American public read, and it has been treated as the official text from 1797 onward.
The 1805 Treaty Dropped the Clause
The peace did not hold. By 1800 the Pasha of Tripoli was demanding larger payments and threatening war. In 1801 the First Barbary War began. Four years later, on June 4, 1805, the two nations signed a new Treaty of Peace and Amity that replaced the 1797 agreement in full.
The 1805 treaty’s Article 14 kept part of the earlier religious language. It repeated that the U.S. government has “no character of enmity against the Laws, Religion or Tranquility of Musselmen” and said the United States had never entered into a voluntary war against any Muslim nation, adding the qualifier “except in the defence of their just rights to freely navigate the High Seas.” But it dropped the phrase “is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion” entirely.5Yale Law School. Treaty of Peace and Amity, Signed at Tripoli June 4, 1805
Because the 1805 treaty superseded the earlier one, Article 11 ceased to carry the force of law. It was not repeated in treaties with any other Barbary State. Its life as active law lasted roughly eight years.
Legal Weight Then and Now
Under Article VI of the Constitution, treaties made under U.S. authority are “the supreme Law of the Land,” binding on judges in every state.6Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Article VI While the 1797 treaty was in force, Article 11 carried the same legal weight as an act of Congress. Since 1805, it has bound no one. Its status today is historical, not legal.
How Article 11 Is Used in Church-State Debates
The clause carries weight in modern debates over the separation of church and state well beyond what its short life as law would suggest. Advocates for strict separation cite Article 11 as direct evidence that the founding generation understood the federal government to be secular in structure, not merely tolerant of different faiths. They lean on the ratification history: a unanimous Senate vote and no recorded objection to the “not founded on the Christian Religion” language suggests the wording was uncontroversial among the political leaders of the 1790s.
Others read it more narrowly. On that view, Article 11 was a diplomatic instrument written for a specific audience — Muslim rulers who might otherwise assume the United States was a Christian power in the European mold — and treating a negotiating clause as a general statement of American identity asks too much of the document.
The Arabic manuscript question sits underneath both readings. If the Article 11 language originated with Barlow rather than as a term both parties negotiated, it reflects the work of one American diplomat, approved by a Senate that may not have scrutinized every clause. The Senate did ratify the English text, unanimously, and Adams proclaimed it, which makes it the official U.S. expression at the time whatever the Arabic said. What the clause is worth as evidence in a modern constitutional argument depends on how much weight a reader is willing to place on a single treaty, ratified without debate, never tested in court, and superseded within a decade.