'Attack On The Black Church'

WASHINGTON--Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Monday called criticism of his past sermons an attack on the black church and repeatedly accused the news media of taking his words out of context.

"How long do you let someone talk about your faith tradition before you speak up?" Wright asked, referring to weeks of criticism and looped videos showing him saying, "God damn America" for killing innocent people.

In another sermon, also replayed frequently, Wright quoted a U.S. ambassador to Iraq saying 9/11 was America's chickens "coming home to roost."

"It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright said. "It is an attack on the black church."

Speaking before an audience of black religious leaders at the National Press Club, Wright, who is retiring from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said he hoped a new dialogue would help people better understand the black religious tradition.

Supporters said Wright needed to respond to the criticism, which wound up in a North Carolina Republican campaign ad.

"It was definitely to the point that unless he confronted the lies, the lies were going to continue to parade as truths," said the Rev. John D. Kinney, dean of the Virginia Union University theology school in Richmond, Va.

But, Kinney said, the timing of Wright's response - amid a presidential campaign -- was "tough."

Obama acknowledged on "Fox News Sunday" that Wright's publicity has not been helpful.

"I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past," Obama said. "The fact that he's my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue."

Wright appeared unconcerned with his political impact.

Referring to the federal government, he said blacks still are owed an apology for slavery.

"I said to Barack Obama last year, if you get elected, November the fifth I'm coming after you," Wright said.

Answering critics who said Wright was unpatriotic, he mentioned his six years of military service. "How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?" Wright asked to applause from supporters.

He said his "God damn America" remarks were meant to show that God blesses acts of peace and kindness and damns acts of war and violence. He talked of slavery, racial segregation and poverty as condemnable acts.

The event at the press club was Wright's third major appearance during a media campaign that started Friday with a public television interview and carried through an NAACP convention in Detroit.

Given chances to explain past sermons, he chastised journalists who called his religious rhetoric controversial and told them to watch his speeches in their entirety.

"Black preaching is different from European and European-American preaching. It is not deficient. It is just different," he said. "It is not bombastic or controversial. It is different."

By speaking now, Virginia ministers said, Wright may open the door for a needed dialogue on race and faith.

Kinney said Wright's media blitz could prevent further misconstruing of the black religious experience.

"The issue was being kept before us. Someone was always raising it," Kinney said. "That meant that someone else was always defining the character of the discussion and defining him."

Rev. James Forbes, who was a pastor at St. John's United Holy Church of America in Richmond from 1965 to 1973 and campus minister at Virginia Union before moving to New York's Riverside Church, called Wright's speech "a good educational moment."

"As we get ready to make selections of the leaders of our country, it's an important thing to see the context to know what the reality is," Forbes said.

"(Wright) views that there's never a bad time for the truth," Forbes said. "There could be an inconvenient time from the perspective of those who are running campaigns."

But Kinney said Wright's message of "different not deficient" runs the risk of oversimplifying the black religious experience.

"When we talk about black churches, we're not talking about a monolith," Kinney said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Neil Simon can be reached at nsimon@mediageneral.com or 202-662-7669.)