How does Barack Obama use Bible passages? Jeffrey Siker, a theology professor at Loyola Marymount University has studied the question using Obama’s two autobiographical books, and his key speeches.
The L A Times reports,
Siker found that the president quotes the Old Testament most often in his public addresses, in particular the Exodus story of liberation from slavery, an oft-mentioned biblical theme in the African American community.
“This blending of stories allows for powerful improvisations and riffs on the biblical narrative as it is retold and reappropriated in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Siker said. “Barack Obama has made effective use of this merged story in his political rhetoric.”
But the two most prevalent motifs that Obama draws from the Bible are that “we are our brother’s keeper” ( Genesis 4:9) and the notion of the “Joshua generation.”
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In the run-up to the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama dubbed the younger generation of Americans the Joshua generation that must finish the work of what he called the “Moses generation,” older Americans who made sacrifices to bring the nation this far. (Joshua, according to the biblical story, became leader of the Israelites after God barred Moses from entering the promised land.)