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.