Over at Beliefnet, Diana Butler Bass attempts to contextualize Wright's preaching in the African-American prophetic tradition. The texture she adds doesn't do a whole lot to change the offensive content of Wright's remarks, but it's interesting anyway. On some level, the basic problem is that many of Wright's feelings are common in a community that has every reason to view American power and purity with a certain skepticism, and Obama himself has traveled through that tradition even as his politics have evolved into an explicit challenge to that outlook.
