The Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose remarks on Aids and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have sparked controversy, is no longer formally tied to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign, an Obama spokesman said late yesterday. Wright, Obama's longtime spiritual adviser and pastor of his Chicago church, was off Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee as of last night, said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, who didn't elaborate. The move follows calls for Obama to sever connections to Wright after news outlets began airing some of the pastor's past sermons.
Wright's sermons have included suggestions the U.S. brought the Sept. 11 attacks on itself and that the government had a role in spreading the AIDS virus in the black community. Obama said he sharply condemns such comments and that he never heard those kinds of sermons from Wright. He also said he doesn't plan to leave the church. ``This is a church I have been a member of for 20 years. This is well-established, typical, historically African-American church,'' Obama told CNN last night. ``What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.''
Obama spoke to supporters at a rally outside Indianapolis today about America's ``tragic history'' when it comes to race and the need to speak ``forcefully'' against remarks such as Wright's.
Wright, who is retiring from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ after 36 years, has prompted a swirl of speculation about his relationship with the Democratic presidential frontrunner. Obama wrote about the influence Wright has had on him in his second book, ``The Audacity of Hope.''