At God's Politics, Diana Butler Bass puts Rev. Wright's sermon in perspective:

But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.

I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that "anyone with experience teaching American religion" would be able to handle the load.

Street Prophet supremo (and UCC minister), Pastor Dan writes:

This is of course part of the two-pronged effort to attack Obama's religious beliefs: smear him as a Muslim, and if not a Muslim, a member of a radical, "racist" church. It makes sense, if you think about it: it's one of the few ways conservatives have to define Obama before he defines himself.

The bad news is that it works among the uninformed. The good news is that more people are becoming informed.

As for the clip itself, I didn't see anything offensive. Harsh, perhaps, but nothing to get our knickers in a knot over. Wright's point - to a congregation in one of the blackest and poorest neighborhoods in Chicago - is that Jesus understands their plight. The stuff about Obama is a tangent. So unless conservatives want to argue that Jesus didn't know anything about being poor and can't sympathize with them (an utterly un-Biblical proposition), they need to sit down, shut up, and let him have his religious freedom.

Professor Jonathan L. Walton at Religion Dispatches:

There is a difference between speaking truth to power in defense of the least of these, and scapegoating the defenseless on behalf of the status-quo. This is why it is inappropriate to compare Dr. Wright with Christian conservative voices like the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or John Hagee. The latter group turns attention away from the interests of a privileged elite-class and lays the ills of society at the door of America’s “usual suspects.” Hence, it is easy to blame racial/ethnic minorities, Islam, feminists, illegal immigrants and the homosexual agenda for events such as 9/11. It is much harder, however, to point the finger at corporate controlled government, a neo-conservative military agenda, and the capricious whims of an exit-poll obsessed administration. And this is what Dr. Wright has attempted to do on a consistent basis over the course of his thirty-six years as pastor. Unlike his conservative opposition, his critique of American society points up as his hand of compassion and justice reaches down.

The New Haven, Connecticut-based Rev. Kathleen McTigue writes on her blog Thinking Faithfully:

This week Barack Obama felt obligated to distance himself from his longtime minister at Trinity UCC, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, because of things that Wright has said about race in America. It’s too bad. Dr. Wright is widely considered one of the best preachers in the country, and he has taken Trinity from a dying inner city church to a vibrant congregation of over 8,000, with vital service missions from Chicago to Africa. Whether or not you regard his words as true or incendiary, Dr. Wright is of course not running for President himself. He’s a preacher, and for decades he’s been doing a better job at it than most ordained ministers can ever dream of.

Preaching is different from political speech not only because it’s supposed to focus on a spiritual message rather than on winning votes. It’s different because of being part of a conversation, week after week, between a minister and his or her congregation. The conversation is always particular: the reason the gospel message lives on through the centuries is that people continue to hear it according to their lives and circumstances. A preacher’s job is to help them do that, and sometimes we do it best by being provocative and shocking.

Addressing the need for free pulpits and free pews, Rev. Debra Haffner writes:

I learned in divinity school that we are to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable" when we are in the pulpit. It has never once occurred to me that I have to agree with my minister on everything he says or that anyone who comes to my services has to agree with me on anything or everything. Indeed in my tradition, we expect as many "I really disagreed with you today" as "good sermon, Reverend."

But, we also have freedom on the pew. We encourage our congregants to take what they like, to leave the rest, to only believe our truths as it reflects their own. In all the reports on Reverend Wright, I haven't seen a news report that remembers to tell us that Trinity UCC has more than 6000 members and is the largest church in the UCC.