PHILADELPHIA — Senator Obama, in a sweeping meditation on race in America, is confronting head-on the issue of racial tensions as he tries to quiet a firestorm over his longtime pastor.

In a 35-minute address yesterday, the Illinois senator offered his most expansive and heartfelt explanation of a 20-year relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., the recently retired pastor of his Chicago church whose widely broadcast and racially charged castigations of American society have hampered Mr. Obama’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Obama reiterated his condemnation of Rev. Wright’s statements as “not only wrong but divisive,” yet he pointedly refused to disassociate himself from the reverend and instead called for Americans to “move beyond the racial wounds of the past.”

With the speech, delivered at the National Constitution Center before an invitation-only audience of clergy and local officials, Mr. Obama sought to place Rev. Wright’s comments, and the conflicted reaction to them from many corners, in the broader context of both the African-American and white experience.

While the address signaled a bold leap into the often rocky terrain of race and politics.
Mr. Obama also indicated that he has no desire to linger on the topic. Within a few hours, his campaign announced that he would deliver major policy addresses on the Iraq war today and tomorrow to mark the fifth anniversary of the American-led invasion.

It was not immediately clear, however, whether Mr. Obama had succeeded in quelling the uproar over Rev. Wright.

Declaring that America has been stuck for years in “a racial stalemate,” Mr. Obama said the tensions that have festered are too often treated as spectacle, citing as examples the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidate — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own,” Mr. Obama said.

“But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice. We have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

In assessing Rev. Wright, Mr. Obama described a man who had helped introduce him to his Christian faith and influenced his belief in the need to care for the sick and the poor. “As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me,” he said.

He was well aware of Rev. Wright’s highly critical views of American domestic and foreign policy, he said. “Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in the church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely,” he said, “just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Until his recent retirement, Rev. Wright, 66, had for more than 30 years served as pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Mr. Obama and his family are members. In video clips that have been widely circulated on the Internet and broadcast repeatedly on cable news, Rev. Wright rails against American foreign policy and a nation that he says is dominated by whites. At one point, he renounces “God Bless America” in favor of “God Damn America.”

While insisting that he was not justifying Rev. Wright’s comments, Mr. Obama placed them in the context of an anger felt by many in the black community stemming from segregation and the discrimination that has lingered in American society in the decades since.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother,” Mr. Obama said, telling of his grandmother’s confession to being fearful of black men and recalling her utterances of racial epithets that, he said, “made me cringe.”

“These people are part of me,” he said. “And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Mr. Obama made only glancing references to his opponents, Senators Clinton and McCain. Mrs. Clinton appeared yesterday afternoon a mile from the Constitution Center, at Philadelphia’s City Hall. She told reporters that she had not yet seen or read Mr. Obama’s speech but that she was “glad” he gave it.

Mr. Obama’s speech drew hearty applause from the audience, and several attendees said they related completely to his perspective.

Few supporters questioned the decision to give the speech, saying the Wright flap had staying power and that Mr. Obama risked suffering the same fate as Senator Kerry, who in 2004 failed to respond aggressively to criticism of his Vietnam War record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. “He had no choice but to control the situation,” a Philadelphia attorney and Obama backer who attended the speech, Sozi Tulanti, said. “It won’t die. This issue is here.”

Yet a former Pennsylvania state senator, Robert Rovner, voiced concern that Mr. Obama’s broader message would be lost among the clips of his statements on Rev. Wright, dulling its impact. “It’s a speech that you have to hear the whole speech and not just hear sound bites,” Mr. Rovner said. “I think unfortunately for Barack Obama, it will be a great speech but it will not change a lot of minds.”