What's the difference between your crazy uncle and the pastor of your church? Usually they're not one and the same.

That's true of Sen. Barack Obama too. And it's going to quickly become a problem.

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

It's one thing if your crazy uncle in the attic utters these sorts of hateful slurs. He's family and there's not much you can do about it other than what Obama's done.

But Obama and Wright are not related. And Obama's decision to continue to attend, and tithe to, a church which preaches this sort of anti-American bigotry and racial division cannot be dismissed by merely saying that you don't agree with it.

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

That's not gonna cut it. It sounds just as stupid as Washington Sen. Patty Murray's statement that the reason people liked Osama bin Laden was because he built day-care centers for women who had to be burka-clad and at home taking care of their kids so there was no reason for the day-care center in the first place.

I can't locate where I read it, but someone somewhere in the blogosphere had posited that Obama needed Wright when he first ran for public office in Chicago. After all, a mixed-race Hawaiian graduate of Harvard might not be seen as genuine on the south side of Chicago. That's very possible explanation, but it's another part of Obama's questionable past that the MSM should be looking into.

UPDATE

Found the post on Obama's need for the Wright imprimatur over at Powerline.

Here's a possible explanation, which someone acquainted with Obama in his early days in Chicago finds quite plausible, but which Obama can't proffer. Twenty years ago, Obama was trying to establish himself in Chicago with an eye (in all likelihood) towards a future run for office. Obama was an outsider. His Ivy League credentials, his having lived abroad, etc would have cut no ice on the south side of Chicago. He needed strong local connections. What better way to establish his authenticity on the south side than to affiliate with Pastor Wright and his influential church? (Obama reportedly also reached out to former terrorist and local political player Bill Ayers and, not ignoring another part of his future coalition, set himself up at the University of Chicago).

Why, under this theory, has Obama remained with the church? For one thing, leaving would be tantamount to acknowledging that there was something suspect about the affiliation. Politicians aren't quick to acknowledge error, especially when doing so carries the risk of alienating one's base constituency.