New atheist billboard echoes the Treaty of Tripoli

Undeterred by an embarrassing misquote of Thomas Jefferson on a billboard in October, the Orange County California group, Backyard Skeptics, is still out there trumpeting the cause of reason and separation of church and state. They're on firmer ground with their latest effort, a billboard that paraphrases a key article from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli. It was unveiled at 1526 Newport Blvd (at the northeast corner of Industrial Way) in Costa Mesa on December 9th. It reads:


AMERICA IS NOT, IN ANY SENSE, FOUNDED ON THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
The Treaty of Tripoli, 1797 - Signed Unanimously by Congress

--snip--

Undeterred by an embarrassing misquote of Thomas Jefferson on a billboard in October, the Orange County California group, Backyard Skeptics, is still out there trumpeting the cause of reason and separation of church and state. They're on firmer ground with their latest effort, a billboard that paraphrases a key article from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli. It was unveiled at 1526 Newport Blvd (at the northeast corner of Industrial Way) in Costa Mesa on December 9th. It reads:


AMERICA IS NOT, IN ANY SENSE, FOUNDED ON THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
The Treaty of Tripoli, 1797 - Signed Unanimously by Congress


--snip--


The treaty was ratified unanimously by Congress and signed by then President John Adams.

The reason the billboard features the Treaty of Tripoli is that it demonstrates that the founding fathers understood and endorsed the governing principle of separation of church which, as Backyard Skeptics spokesman Bruce Gleason wrote in an email announcing the billboard, "is one of the fundamental concepts our constitutional authors had when penning the Constitution: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'" The treaty is, in fact, direct and compelling evidence that the United States was not "in any sense" founded as a Christian nation.

http://www.examiner.com/atheism-in-los-angeles/new-atheist-billboard-echoes-the-treaty-of-tripoli