Thread by @BretDevereaux

Oh yeah, also shout out to Micah 4:4 getting into the inauguration, being quoted by Amanda Gorman (via George Washington (maybe also via the musical Hamilton, but it was famous before)) in her amazing poem (and what delivery!)

The full verse goes:
"Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken" (NIV)

In its context, the verse contemplates a future world at peace under God's rule.

But Washington, most famously in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, took the verse as an ideal for the American republic, where people of every stripe "shall sit...

...in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."
(Full text here: facinghistory.org/nobigotry/the-…)

It was a promise that the US would be a country where everyone, regardless of race or creed, could build their own lives, free of interference.

As Washington put it, "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights"

Of course Washington's assertion that "the Government of the United States [...] gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance" rings a little hollow given that he held other men in bondage and that the government would indeed long sanction that bigotry.

But I think the aspiration, if not the reality, of Washington's use of Micah 4:4's vine and fruit tree, is a powerful and salutary vision for a pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-religious republic.

I'm always glad to see that vision put forward.