Barack Obama and the Voice of God: Time

In the 1950s and '60s, God was a man named Alexander Scourby. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., of Greek immigrant parents and attended college in West Virginia, but he spoke in a "deep and resonant voice" (as Wikipedia puts it) and — here is the key point — with more than a touch of a British accent. Long after Britain had exhausted its resources in World War II and lost its empire, a British accent conveyed authority, dignity, power.

by Michael Kinsley in Time Magazine

In Hollywood, they sometimes refer to an omniscient but unseen narrator as a VOG, short for voice of God. Scourby was the leading VOG of his day, in documentaries like Victory at Sea and numerous commercials. His was the voice in the first ever recording of the entire Bible, made in the 1940s. At that time, it was as natural to assume that God spoke with a British accent as it was to assume that he had a beard — or, for that matter, that he was a he.

Scourby died in 1985, after at least two complete recordings of the Bible and one of the Koran. Yes, in those days, even the Prophet Muhammad had a British accent. So who is God today? The answer is clear: he is James Earl Jones. Jones' voice is best known for five immortal syllables: "THIS [pause] is CNN." Jones is also the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films. And his recording of the King James Version of the Bible has sold more than 400,000 copies. Jones' voice is even deeper and more resonant than Scourby's, but there is only a trace of a British accent. Jones is African American and sounds it.

The currently best-selling audio Bible, Inspired by ... the Bible Experience, has an all-star cast including Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Samuel L. Jackson and Forest Whitaker — all African American. Meanwhile, Jones' only real competition for the role of God — at least until Denzel Washington gets a bit older — is Morgan Freeman. Jones is the Old Testament God, fierce and forbidding. Freeman is the New Testament version, all wise and all knowing, to be sure, but more approachable. He has done it twice in movies, has been the VOG in commercials for Listerine and Visa cards, among other products, and was the inevitable choice as narrator for that excruciatingly adorable movie about penguins. Freeman told an Associated Press reporter a few months ago that he is "tired of playing God." Who can blame him? At least as Freeman plays him, God is a bit hard to take: so full of tough love and wry wisdom that you long to wear a wire and catch him soliciting $8 million bribes to admit you into heaven.

Brits and pseudo-Brits, in sum, have lost this franchise. If you're a casting director looking for a voice whose very timbre communicates authority, dignity, power, you might even go to Queen Latifah before you resort to Jeremy Irons. The reasons aren't hard to speculate about. The roots of this development go back at least to the 1930s and Paul Robeson's singing "Ol' Man River" in Showboat. The therapeutic notion that suffering confers dignity and authority has spread just as the suffering of African Americans over generations has become universally acknowledged. Above all, black American ministers have replaced British politicians, at least in perception, as the world's most eloquent public users of the English language. Our homegrown Martin Luther King Jr. has knocked Winston Churchill off his perch as the ideal.

What's most inspiring about this development is that it can't be faked. There is no element of affirmative action here. Sidney Poitier won't do. The point is not to be black but to sound black. And unlike the integration and near domination of African Americans in professional sports, this is not even a matter of genuine talent breaking down the floodgates. Plenty of white or white-sounding actors could say "THIS [pause] is CNN" as well as Jones. Most people who have heard that phrase a hundred times don't know whose voice it is and — unless the question is raised specifically — they aren't even consciously aware that the person is black. They relate to the voice on a subconscious level, and they associate it with power and authority.

Starting Jan. 20, the most powerful person in the world actually will be a black man. Although President Barack Obama is one of the greatest public speakers now practicing that art, he probably couldn't get hired as the anonymous voice-over spokesman for a brand of cereal because he doesn't sound black enough. Nevertheless, he is a beneficiary of this development. When God turned into an African American, it became less unthinkable that the President might be African American as well.