Rev. Wright Defends Church, Blasts Media

Kate Phillips
NYT blog

In three major appearances in the last four days, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. offered a full-throated historical defense of black church traditions. But his re-emergence on the national stage has certainly served to provide more sound-bites that already have begun to haunt Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

With Senator John McCain’s fresh criticisms of the pastor and Republicans painting him and Mr. Obama as extremist in commercials using snippets of sermons, Mr. Wright, longtime pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, defiantly and passionately argued that such criticisms were attacks on the black church and its faith traditions, not attacks on him.

In an appearance this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, Mr. Wright mixed biblical passages and scholarly works with sarcasm and humor in his efforts to address the nearly two months’ long barrage of questions that have dogged his church and Mr. Obama since excerpts of his sermons first began looping around on television and the Internet.

Asked why he chose to speak out now, Mr. Wright said: “On November the 5th and on January 21st, I’ll still be a pastor. As I’ve said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. This is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African- American religious tradition.”

(Continued here.)