“He does not speak for me,” says Barack Obama, of his former Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But Jeremiah Wright keeps speaking anyway.

After weeks of lying low, in the past week Rev. Wright has been all over: with Bill Moyers Friday night, preaching in Dallas and speaking before the NAACP on Sunday, taking questions at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday.

Wright says he is defending the black church. Critics say he’s undercutting the campaign of the first black American with a real shot at the White House.

This hour, On Point: listening to Rev. Wright.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Peter Nicholas, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he covered Jeremiah Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club.

Jonathan Walton, an ordained minister, professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside, and author of the forthcoming book “Watch This! Televangelism and Black Popular Culture.”

Bill Leonard, dean of the Divinity School and professor of church history at Wake Forest University.

The prophetic and gospel messages of the Bible are pretty tough on worldly power and wealth and violence. From the Chicago pulpit of Barack Obama’s longtime minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in the cadence and language of the black church, those messages sound like hellfire for a very worldly American superpower.

Now the preacher is retired and Obama has condemned his most fiery proclamations. But when Reverend Wright meets mainstream America on YouTube and Fox News, in the middle of a red-hot campaign, you’ve got fireworks.

This hour, On Point: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the American presidency.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lisa Miller, senior editor at Newsweek. She oversees all of the magazine’s religion coverage and writes the Belief Watch column.

Dwight Hopkins, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a member of Barack Obama’s congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ.

Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for Time magazine.

Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist for The Chicago Tribune.