Voters don’t often bring up Jeremiah Wright at Barack Obama’s events, but today one did. “I was sick to death of the sound bites of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “ a woman commented at a town hall meeting in Winston-Salem, NC. In response, Obama would only say on the matter, “I’m going to be having a big press conference afterwards to talk about this so I don’t want to distract from this issue.”

True to his word, following the event, Obama took the podium in front of members of the press corps. “I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That’s who I am. That’s what I believe. That’s what this campaign has been about,” he began. “I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” he said of his former pastor’s engagement at the National Press Club Monday.

Following the Press Club event yesterday, Obama held a hastily arranged media avail in front of his waiting plane on a North Carolina tarmac, where he reiterated his previous opposition to his former pastor’s statements. But that was before he read the transcript or watched Wright’s defiant performance.

Today, for nearly 30 minutes, the candidate addressed the deeply personal matter that has become a very public issue in this race, using his strongest language yet and made it clear that his 20-year relationship with the man he once likened to a “crazy uncle” was no longer going to be part of the family. Today, for the first time, he admitted, “There’s been great damage. It may have been unintentional on his part, but you know I do not see that relationship being the same after this.”

While Obama has previously defended Wright for the snippets of audio that were looped on television as painting a “caricature” of the pastor, today Obama did not excuse him. “Yesterday I think he caricatured himself, and that was as I said, that made me angry but also made me sad,” he said. “There wasn’t anything constructive out of yesterday. All it was was a bunch of rants that that aren’t grounded in truth.”

Wright’s appearance at the Press Club seems to be the last straw for Obama. “I’ve known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs and if Rev Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, well I may not know him as well as I thought either,” he said.

When asked if he would continue to be a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama acknowledged his relationship with his church had been strained as a result of the spectacle that’s been a result of Wright’s comments. “When I go church it’s not for spectacle, it’s to pray and to find to find a stronger sense of faith, it’s not to posture politically. It’s not to hear things that violate my core beliefs and so you know and I certain don’t want to provide a distraction to those who are worshipping at Trinity. As of this point I’m a member. I haven’t had a discussion with Reverend [Otis] Moss (the current minister) about it so I can’t tell you how he’s reacting and how he’s responding.”

Watch Obama’s opening remarks at his Winston-Salem press avail here:

Pundits and journalists labeled Obama’s Philadelphia speech “a test,” a defining moment in Barack Obama’s candidacy, where he would address the issue that could sink his chances of becoming the nation’s first black president – his relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Over the past week, Wright has been the focus of much scrutiny over his anti-white and controversial statements about the United States of America made at the pulpit in the Chicago church where Obama attends. Which explains all the media attention Obama’s 37-minute-long speech received. Much of his remarks were carried live on the cable television networks, while the campaign had to accommodate press in an overflow room, something usually reserved for the hundreds of supporters who can’t fit into a gymnasium or auditorium.

The speech was written by the senator himself, and described by staffers as very personal in nature. As he has since the story broke last week, Obama distanced himself from Reverend Wright’s “incendiary” remarks, which he called “divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems.”

He acknowledging there were still “nagging questions,” and attempted to explain why he hasn’t further distanced himself from someone who could utter such controversial words.

“Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man,” he said, reading evenly from a teleprompter.

Obama described his 20-year relationship with his former pastor; how Wright introduced him to the Christian faith and some of the good Wright has done in the community. He also attempted to explain the complexities that often go hand-in-hand with African American churches.

“Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me,” Obama explained. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.”

Obama assured his audience that this speech was not meant to “justify or excuse” Wright’s comments. “I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork,” he said. But to do so “would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.”

What followed was a lengthy and personal assessment of race in America.

Keep reading below the jump….Watch Obama’s speech here:

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Yesterday Barack Obama published a statement on his former pastor’s incendiary sermons on the Huffington Post blog and conducted interviews on the three cable networks. Today, he brought it up the hot topic on the campaign trail at a high school in Plainfield, Indiana - an effort to take ownership of the problematic issue rather than let it fester on its own. At times like these when our divisions become the focus, it is important to remember that we can come together as a nation in spite of the things that divide us, Obama told the racially diverse crowd.

Senator Obama waited until the end of his Indiana town hall meeting to bring up the sore subject. He began by recalling Bobby Kennedy’s speech in Indianapolis after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Read his remarks, in full, below.

“[RFK] said at that moment of anguish, he said we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further, so that we no longer see each other as Americans, but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes and we can decide to walk down this road together and remake America once again. You know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech in the convention in 2004, there’s no black America, white America, or Asian America or Latino America. There’s the United States of America.

“I noticed over the last several weeks, the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody senses that there’s been this shift. You’ve been seeing it in the reporting. You’ve been seeing it in some of the commentary of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you’ve heard some statements of my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly if all I knew was those statements I saw on television, I’d be shocked. And it reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. This country wants something different,” he said. The crowd of some 3,000 began to cheer and chant, “Yes we can,” a mantra many Obama supporters have repeated since the candidate used it throughout his speech following his New Hampshire primary defeat.

“I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment where we can not forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget that we have to acknowledge them and lift them up. When people say things like what my former pastor said, you have to speak our forcefully against them, but what you have to also do is to remember what Bobby Kennedy said that it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America.

“And that we have to do not just so our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is also the only way that we’re going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care – divided. We cannot create an economy that works when we’re divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about, that’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re going to win this election,” he concluded.

Senator Barack Obama often talks about his church, the Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago, on the campaign trail. Normally he refers to the church to assure voters that he is Christian, not Muslim, a notion that has plagued the candidate along the campaign trail. Typically Obama says he has attended the church for 20 years and if one were to go, they’d find a “very conventional African American church” where you would hear gospel music and “people preaching about Jesus.” In Ohio just a few days ago, Obama told voters, “You would feel at home if you were there.”

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who until just a couple weeks ago presided over Trinity’s congregation, officiated Senator and Mrs. Obama’s wedding and baptized their two daughters. In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote the pastor had great influence over him in the 1990s, and it was Wright who delivered a sermon entitled “The Audacity of Hope,” which had such an impact on Obama, that he chose to use the phrase as the title of his second book. And, of course, hope continues to be a main theme of the Obama campaign.

But Obama’s pastor has also been a lightning rod for controversy. For starters, Wright’s relationship with Louis Farrakhan, one described as “close” by Senator Obama, has been of concern to many in the Jewish community.

On February 24th, Obama spoke to the Cleveland Jewish Community Leaders group, where he was asked about Wright. Obama noted the pastor occasionally was known to “say controversial things,” adding most of those controversial statements were “directed at the African American community.” Barely a week later, he explained why Wright said things that are considered controversial. “Because he’s considered that part of his social gospel. He was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that, and he thinks it’s important for us to focus on what’s happening in Africa, and I agree with him on that.”

Obama assured the Ohio Jewish leaders, “I have never heard an anti-Semitic [statement] made inside of our church. I have never heard anything that would suggest anti-Semitism on part of the Pastor. He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with. And I suspect there are some of the people in this room who have heard relatives say some things that they don’t agree with.” He added, “My pastor is going to be retiring over the next month. So my general view, and the reason that I raise this, this is always a sensitive point, what you don’t want to do is distance yourself or kick somebody away, because you are now running for President and you are worried about perceptions, particularly when someone is basically winding down their life and their career.”

But the controversy hasn’t gone away - it’s now bigger and extends beyond the Jewish community. In some of his sermons, Wright has said some pretty shocking things, including inflammatory remarks about both rival Hillary Clinton and the United States, as revealed by FOX News and other networks.

A campaign spokesman issued a statement to reporters, reading, “Senator Obama has said before that he profoundly disagrees with some of the statements and positions of Reverend Wright, who has preached his last sermon as pastor at the church. Senator Obama deplores divisive statements whether they come from his supporters, the supporters of his opponent, talk radio, or anywhere else.”

The story only grew, and so Senator Obama responded with an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post blog site this afternoon, taking a harder stance against his longtime pastor, and clearly hoping this will be the end of the controversy.

Obama said he “vehemently disagreed” with the statements currently in the spotlight. Obama wrote Rev. Wright “has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn. The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”

The campaign can’t remember when Obama last attended Trinity, but said it had been “months.” Obama wrote that he would continue a relationship with his church under the care of its new pastor, Otis Moss, III, who took over just last weekend. “While Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States,” Obama concluded.