Joshua Obama

Barack Obama is Joshua to Martin Luther King's Moses. He is not the only Joshua, and there is not only one promised land. The long exodus is not about the presidency, but about overcoming the great original sin of America: anti-black racism. However the presidential race turns out in 2008, I am glad to live in a time when there is a Joshua like Obama. Not the one I expected -- the product of a Kenya/Kansas hippy union, by way of Occidental, Columbia, Harvard and then Chicago community organizing, and then the U.S. Senate. But he is a good one.

Barack Obama gave a pretty good Joshua speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church for Martin Luther King Day; if every word of that sentence seems deeply meaningful to you, we share the same religion.