Obama rose to prominence by claiming that he could put an end to the divisions between Americans: no more red states and blue states, but rather the United States of America.

Instead — inevitably — he has become a focal point of America's deepest divisions. Both Clinton (relatively subtly) and now McCain (relatively overtly) have raised the spectre of race, religion, and otherness in an attempt to block Obama's momentum.

It looks like Obama will win the election despite those efforts. And, as America's first black President, I think ultimately Obama will become a symbol of America moving past its deep-seated divisions: its bitter racial history.

That's a very Christ-like scenario. Absorbing in his own person the bitter race- and religion-based attacks, and emerging victorious at the end of the process, thereby bringing healing with respect to those precise divisions.

I'm not saying that Obama has clean hands. He isn't a perfectly innocent man, like the Bible describes Jesus. But insofar as his political enemies spew venom at him, yet Obama first absorbs and then destroys the lethal power of that venom — that's a kind of a recapitulation of Christ's history.