Yesterday was set aside by many denominations as a day to celebrate the sacredness of human life in all its manifestations. (President Bush has issued a proclamation honoring the day.) At the service I attended–at a church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America–we heard the words of Psalm 139: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well. My body was not hidden from you, while I was being made in secret . . .”

Human beings are indeed marvelously made, but we are also very creative in finding ways to dehumanize others who differ from us in various ways (skin color, stage of fetal development, religion, sexual orientation, political views–as I said, we’re creative). But the symbolism of this Tuesday is encouraging. Yes, it’s true that the new president is a 100 percent partisan of “abortion rights”–and that will indeed have very bad short-term consequences for the effort to protect unborn human beings. But it’s also true that we are installing as commander-in-chief a man whose skin color would once have left him, too, defined as “less than human” by American law. A black person can be president because there cannot, in reality, be something that is only “three-fifths” human. This, I think, is why young people are the demographic group most disposed to be pro-life: They are the ones most likely to be able to see past the prejudiced orthodoxies of the past, and see in an unborn girl or boy what is really there–one of us, marvelously made.

Barack Obama thus represents both the future and the past. In showing that America can get over anti-black bigotry, he represents our future. In resisting the idea that the unborn deserve protection, he is very much stuck in the past. I learned only very recently that it was the late and already much missed Rev. Richard John Neuhaus who suggested to George W. Bush the language that the not-yet-born should be “welcomed in life and protected by law.” That, I think and pray, is our future. It’s the deepest promise of our country.