Recently Barack Obama gave a speech entitled “the Joshua generation” at historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama. Brown Chapel was one of the main staging areas for demonstrations in support of the voting rights movement that ultimately led to the passage of the 1965 voting rights bill. This event was to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, known as “Bloody Sunday.” All the civil rights luminaries were in attendance, many of whom support Obama for president.
I was encouraged by Obama’s claiming of the civil rights movement as a valid and historic part of his legacy. However for me the most interesting part of what he had to say was his distinction between the Moses and Joshua generations. He said the Moses generation was the generation of the civil rights activists who helped lead the struggle for Black rights, just as Moses led the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. In contrast, the present-day Joshua generation reaped the benefits of the collective struggle without having made the sacrifice. In other words, they have not had the Red Sea, or wilderness, experience.
The distinction between the Moses and Joshua generations is not simply a chronological one. It is a state of mind—which is often, but not always, a reflection of chronological age. In the Hebrew Scriptures we are told that when Moses sent out twelve spies, only Caleb and Joshua brought back a positive report and encouraged the people to go up and possess the land. In Numbers 14:24 it says, “But my servant Caleb (and Joshua), he had another spirit with him, and has followed me fully, him will I bring into the land where into he went; and his seed shall possess it.”
I believe this is a spiritual/metaphysical, rather literal/political, interpretation. Therefore, it is an even more powerful and relevant message for our time because it applies to all of us. Each of us must choose which report we will believe, and thereby determine which generation we belong to: the Moses generation or the Joshua generation. There is no shame in belonging to either. However, let us be clear: one is focused on the past; the other is focused on the future and on its positive possibilities.
As with the Moses of the past, Obama was saying, people of the contemporary world’s Moses generation cannot take future generations into the Promised Land. They could see it and know that the Promised Land was real, but they could not experience it first-hand. The more I think about his remarks, the more I understand why Obama remained vague on this point, and why his speech seemed to receive a lukewarm reception. Nobody wants to be told that they cannot go into the Promised Land—especially not Black people, who have so strongly identified with the story of Moses and the children of Israel.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses’ disobedience prevented him from going into the Promised Land. The Moses generation of the present day—which includes people who lived in the pre-civil rights era and experienced the bondage of segregation and apartheid—has not arrived at the Promised Land in part because we have not been true to the full vision of beloved community and global human rights. We (I count myself a member of the Moses generation) have not sufficiently addressed issues of class, especially within the African American community. Nor have we spoken out with passion and clarity regarding sexism, heterosexism, Christian hegemony, militarism, and environmental degradation. Many have felt that to acknowledge the validity of other movements for rights and justice risks taking us away from the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the first to talk about not being able to go into the Promised Land in his mountaintop speech, the evening before he died. The common understanding of his remarks is that he was predicting his death and giving his own eulogy. Yet if King had lived, I believe he could have bridged the gap between the Moses and Joshua generations, as indicated by his Riverside Church speech – “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” King called for a “radical reconstruction” of America, relentlessly turning the nation toward the needs of our poorest, most vulnerable people.
There are at least three living generations in every social movement—for example: the Women’ movement, the movement for Gay and Lesbian rights, the peace movement, and the environmental movement. Each of these movements was born out of the civil rights movement or gained new life from it. The shadow side of the Moses generation is that often its members’ interest in transforming the world has not extended to personal transformation. They have not always been interested in doing the work to transform themselves. In contrast, the Joshua generation is more inwardly focused and is less concerned about social change. We need people from each generation who are willing to commit to inner and outer transformation simultaneously.
All three generations (the Moses generation, the Joshua generation, and the children of the Joshua generation, commonly known as “Generation X”) have work to do. Each generation has its strengths and its challenges. The Moses generation, which I am very familiar with, is full of courageous, passionate fighters for justice.
More than anything, we need a collective vision that describes the kind of world we want to create, while inspiring and motivating us to work to bring it into existence. As bell hooks has said:
“There can be no revolution if we are not well on a personal level. Revolutions made by people who are not well tend to result ultimately in chaos, or worse, in the very patterns and systems of domination being challenged."
We need a vision that calls us to our highest and best selves: a vision for the 21st century that is grounded in both our sociopolitical circumstances and in Judeo-Christian traditions of prophetic justice. We will be known by “our fruit, our works and deeds and by every word that comes out of our mouths.” We need people from every generation to step forward and embody spiritual warrior-hood—which, as Matthew Fox says, is different from soldier-hood because it requires “heart work.”
A new world is possible! A new world is already here! As Margaret Walker expresses in her beautiful poem, For My People:
“Let a new earth arise. Let another world be born… Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood.”