Today’s Religion News Service digest contains a short piece by Adelle M. Banks on President Obama’s remarks after touring Germany’s Buchenwald Concentration Camp. I was struck by the similarity in some of Obama’s rhetoric and word choice to that employed in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. (Subscribers can access the entire story at the link above.)

Here’s Lincoln: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And here’s Obama, (with a few phrases highlighted in bold):

And it is now up to us, the living, in our work, wherever we are, to resist injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take, and ensure that those who were lost here did not go in vain. It is up to us to redeem that faith.

It is up to us to bear witness; to ensure that the world continues to note what happened here; to remember all those who survived and all those who perished, and to remember them not just as victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed just like us.

Obama doesn’t reach Lincoln’s height of poetry (and brevity), but the parallels are striking…at least to me.

Photo source: Reuters