CHICAGO — On the Sunday in 2003 when Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. shouted "God damn America" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, he defined damnation as God's way of holding humanity accountable for its actions.
Rattling off a litany of injustices imposed on minorities throughout the nation's history, Wright argued that God cannot be expected to bless America unless it changes for the better. Until that day, he said, God will hold the nation accountable.
And that's when Wright uttered the three words that have rocked Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Not long after a Democratic front-runner emerged from the pews of Wright's church, the pastor's long-winded oratory found itself at odds with the sound-bite culture that feeds the 24-hour news cycle and YouTube. Thirty-second snippets of 30-minute sermons led pundits to question how Obama could remain a member of Wright's flock.
Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style yields a far more complex message, though one that some will still find objectionable. For more than 30 years, Wright walked churchgoers every Sunday along a winding road from rage to reconciliation, employing a style that validated both.
"He's voicing a reality that those people experience six days a week," said the Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. "In that sense, he's saying they're not insane. That helps them to function the other six days of the week."
Wright preached his final sermon at his "unashamedly black, unapologetically Christian" church in February but does not officially retire until May 31. Wright had been scheduled this week to speak publicly for the first time since debate erupted this month over his remarks, but those stops in Florida and Texas were canceled over security concerns.
Efforts to interview him for this story were unsuccessful.
Obama has denounced Wright's most provocative remarks, but in a speech on race this month he defended Wright as a person and refused to disown him as his pastor.
Wright's preaching, which mixes theology with the often troubled history of race relations in America, is in the "prophetic" tradition, one of many that have evolved in black pulpits.
Shocking phrases like "God damn America" lie at the core of prophetic preaching, said the Rev. Bernard Richardson, dean of the chapel at Howard University.
