A former mayor of Fargo, Jon Lindgren, president of the local Freethinkers group stated, “The monument will display a sentence from a historical doctrine.”  

I had to ask myself: Who are the Freethinkers? And what historic doctrine is he talking about?  The Fargo Forum article mentioned language from the Treaty of Tripoli (1797). Here I display my own ignorance. What was the Treaty of Tripoli (I was pretty sure it had to do with pirates and Muslims!) and what does that have to do with the Ten Commandments monument erected in 1958?

So I went online. I Googled (I think that’s a word now!) “Freethinkers” and was surprised to find that there are groups all over the country, even the world, that are part of Freethinkers. The obvious quest then was to find out what they think. I read pages and pages and went to numerous sites. I found these words to describe them:  secularists, humanists, atheists, agnostics, materialists, evolutionists, skeptics, pacifists, socialists or any combination of the aforementioned. Nowhere did I find a “statement of belief” (I think belief is a word they only use sneeringly).  From what I read they are open to any system of belief (sorry, there’s that word again!) except for Christianity. On one site I actually found a hymnal. Now what in the world would they have to sing about? I was saddened to find disrespectful, contemptuous words substituted in hymn parodies such as All Hail the Power of Darwin’s Name, Amazing Place, Tell Me No Stories of Jesus, There is No Hell (tune: The First Noel), Evolution Chorus (tune: Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah) and many more. 

One site listed a tentative (a disclaimer states that names could be removed without notice if a lawsuit is threatened) Who’s Who of Freethinkers which included: Woody Allen, Fidel Castro, Larry Flynt, Howard Stern, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Ted Turner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Joseph Stalin, Barry Manilow, Clarence Darrow, Charles Darwin, Jack Kevorkian, Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain, Mikhail Gorbachev, Hugh Hefner, John Lennon and many more.

So that’s the Freethinkers thinking.

Next I searched through my U.S. Government section in our library and found very little on the Treaty of Tripoli, but when I Googled! it I found some great information. The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) was one of several negotiated during the conflict with the Barbary Coast (Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli) Muslim pirates. Their war, by their own claim, was against the Christian nations of England, France, Spain, Denmark and the U.S.

For many years the Muslim fleets regularly attacked undefended U.S. merchant ships. The cargo was stolen and the seamen were enslaved (apparently in retaliation for the Crusades and expulsion of the Moors from Spain).  The U.S. sent envoys to negotiate the Peace and Amity treaties in an attempt to stop the Muslim pirates from stealing and kidnapping. The terms were like so many U.S. treaties:  we got the short end of the stick (e.g. the U.S. provided a warship to Tripoli, a frigate to Algiers, $525,000 in ransom for captured U.S. seamen).  By June 1815 when the U.S. had finally had enough of the theft and slavery perpetrated by the Muslim pirates, the malcontents were completely overwhelmed and agreed to American terms making the Mediterranean  safe for trade and travel.

Now to the historical document mentioned by Lindgren and his merry band of Freethinkers. The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) contains the following Article XI:

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 Musselmen and as the said State have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan 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.

ND Freethinkers want to include the beginning of the quote (italicized) on their memorial to be erected near the Ten Commandments. Am I a dullard or what? Why would they want to memorialize anything since they don’t seem to really believe in anything?

Is this being properly interpreted by Freethinkers? According the David Barton, WallBuilders, Article XI can be read in two manners. It can be concluded after the clause “Christian religion”, which is what the monument-erecting Freethinkers intend. Or it can read in its entirety.

Barton states:

Even if shortened and cut abruptly (“the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”), this is not an untrue statement since it is referring to the federal government. Recall that while the Founders themselves openly described America as a Christian nation, they did include a constitutional prohibition against a federal establishment, religion was a matter left solely to the individual States. Therefore, if the article is read as a declaration that the federal government of the United States was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, such a statement is not a repudiation of the fact that America was considered a Christian nation. (www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=5)

Barton goes on to say that the article attempted to make clear the differentiation between European Christianity and its hatred for Muslims and the newly-founded nation. It was an attempt to alleviate the fears of the Barbary Coast countries that America would take up the war against Islam that European Christian nations had been fighting for centuries.

Involved parties in the struggle had no illusions about the Christian nature of the American nation. The Barbary Coast pirates didn’t either, as demonstrated by one of their maxims: The Christians who would be on good terms with them must fight well or pay well.  

General Eaton, U.S. Military Agent to the Barbary States, in correspondence to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering to apprise him of why the Muslims would be such dedicated foes stated:

Taught by revelation that war with the Christians will guarantee the salvation of their souls, and finding so great secular advantages in the observance of this religious duty, their [the Muslims’] inducements to desperate fighting are very powerful. (Emphasis added.)

The pirates even thanked the U.S. for their extorted compensations by saying:

To speak truly and candidly we must acknowledge to you that we have never received articles of the kind of so excellent a quality from any Christian nation. (Emphasis added.)

Following the termination of these wars, Charles Prentiss published The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton: Several Years an Officer in the United States’ Army Consul at the Regency of Tunis on the Coast of Barbary, and Commander of the Christian and Other Forces that Marched from Egypt Through the Desert of Barca, in 1805, and Conquered the City of Derna, Which Led to the Treaty of Peace Between the United States and the Regency of Tripoli (Hard to imagine a publisher allowing a title of this length to be used today!).  (Emphasis added.)

The main players in the event knew full well that the Barbary Coast pirates were Muslims and their American adversaries were Christian, irregardless of what Article XI may be misconstrued to mean.

Back full circle to the Freethinkers. It is quite disingenuous of them to advocate language  which even with a cursory look does not appear to mean what they intend. A look at ALL the history of the naissance of America, a reading of even a small amount of the documents relative to the Founding Fathers (see side bar this page for Supreme Court decisions) or an honest review of the design of our Constitutional representative republic will lead one to understand that America was founded upon Christian principles, by mostly Christian men with a primarily Christian worldview.

Additional quotes from Supreme Court decisions add weight to the view that America was founded from a Christian worldview: 

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.

Church of the Holy Trinity  v. United States, (1892), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Josiah Brewer

 We are a Christian people...according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledge with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.

United States v. Macintosh, (1931), U.S. Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland

It is true that religion has been closely identified with our history and government. As we said in Engle v. Vitale, “The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion.” 

Secularism is unconstitutional...preferring those who do not believe over those who do believe...It is the duty of government to deter no-belief religions...Facilities of government cannot offend religious principles.

School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, (1963), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark

We find no constitutional requirement makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against the efforts to widen the scope of religious influence. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.

Zorach v. Clauson, (1952) U.S. Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas