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:

On a noisy, windy tarmac in Wilmington, North Carolina, Barack Obama took a few minutes to address his traveling press corps - despite running more than an hour behind schedule. “I wanted to make sure that I made myself available for you guys briefly. We’re running about an hour late, but obviously since Reverend Wright had his Press Club event today, I assume you guys wanted a response or a reaction of some sort,” he said, standing in front of his campaign plane, jets noisily running.

“Yeah,” someone in the gaggle responded.

“I have said before and I will repeat again that what some of the comments that Reverend Wright have made offend me, and I understand why they’ve offended the American people. He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign, and so he may make statements in the future that don’t reflect my values or concerns,” he said. Instead, Obama said his intention was to focus on the issues important to the American people along the campaign trail.

In the middle of his response, a helicopter rudely landed nearby, causing the senator to pause and smile. “Alright anyway, so I’m gonna take three questions and then we gotta go,” he declared.

When asked if he felt betrayed by his former pastor, Obama laughed. “What the last 3 days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him. He’s obviously free to speak his mind,” he observed.

How will he handle the Wright issue going forward? Obama noted that most of the voters he’s met along the campaign trail have not been asking him about Reverend Wright, but about issues like the economy, gas prices, and health care. Since the Wright scandal, only a few questioners have asked Obama about his former pastor out of hundreds of questions fielded - not including those from reporters, of course.

“I think people will understand that I am not perfect and that, you know, there are gonna be, you know, folks in my past like Reverend Wright that may cause them some concern but that ultimately, you know, my 20 years of service and the values that I’ve written about and spoken about and promoted are their values, and what they’re concerned about and that’s what this campaign has been about and what it’s going to continue to be about,” he said.

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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Barack Obama today took questions from the media following a town hall meeting in Monaca, Pennsylvania. The purpose was for Obama to talk about the economy and respond to Senator Clinton’s speech today on the Iraq war.

When faced with multiple questions about his relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama assured the assembled press corps that he would address our questions at a speech tomorrow in Philadelphia.

“I am going to be talking about, not just Rev. Wright, but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks. So I don’t want to give a full preview – you might not come to the speech,” he told reporters.

The speech, billed as a “major address on race, politics, and unifying our country,” is still being written by speechwriters and the senator himself, who considers this speech to be very personal, per a senior staffer. While he will discuss Wright, the speech was not scheduled in direct response to the storyline per se, but because the issue of race has come up so prominently in the past few weeks, and during the course of the campaign.

At today’s media avail, the senator deferred several questions on Wright to the speech, at one point noting tomorrow’s event will be “a lot more fulsome than a press conference.” He added, “Does that make sense?”

But Obama did allow a small glimpse into his thoughts, saying, “I think the caricature that’s been painted of [Wright] is not accurate. And so part of what I’ll do tomorrow is just to talk a little bit about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently,” he said. Trinity Church issued a statement yesterday saying Wright’s character was being “assassinated” by the media.

The only other question he fielded on the subject was when asked how the story has impacted his campaign. “You guys are in a better position to assess that than I am,” he replied.

Watch the exchange with reporters here:

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.