The scrutiny of Sen. Barack Obama’s relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the recently retired pastor of Obama’s Chicago church, highlights the complex intersections of religion and race in the United States.

Neither Wright’s purportedly inflammatory statements nor the pressure on Obama to repudiate them are anything new. The tangled webs of religion and race are two of the most persistent themes in American history.

Wright’s simultaneous embrace of Christianity and condemnation of the United States, mostly for its failure to live up to Christian ideals of social justice, has been a part of African-American rhetoric since the first slave conversions to Christianity. Looking back even further, preaching condemnation against the nation stretches back to the Old Testament. The jeremiad, a sermon calling for repentance to avoid judgment, is named after the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, an irony critics of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright fail to grasp.

Even Obama, who has recently distanced himself from Wright, would do well to remember the rhetorical tradition of Wright’s criticisms have a long history in the speeches and writings of African-American leaders who are exalted by black and white Americans alike. Frederick Douglass, whose autobiography of his escape from slavery to freedom is a mainstay of American civic education, spoke in terms similar to those for which Wright is castigated:

“I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”

Even Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy political candidates of all races and parties try to claim, shared Wright’s condemnation of American aggression, criticizing “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”

Wright’s call that “God damn America” creates a paradox for his critics, especially those on the Christian right, because he takes seriously the idea of the United States as a Christian nation.

Wright’s denomination, the United Church of Christ, descends directly from the Puritans who settled in New England. The Puritans wanted to create a Christian society that would be “a city upon a hill” that would be a model for all the world. But they also understood that God would hold them accountable for their failings, since Puritan jeremiads highlighting failures were far more common than sermons claiming success. (War was a leading sign of God’s judgment.)

By the 19th century, black preachers had adapted the jeremiad-style sermon, calling upon American Christians to be faithful to the ideals of equality and justice rooted not only in the sacred texts of Christianity, but also in the sacred texts of the nation, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Alongside this historical amnesia, calls for Obama to distance himself from Wright reflect a racial bias as well. The racial double-standard in America requires a member of a minority group to dissociate him- or herself from fellow “troublemakers” in ways not expected of whites.

Racial similarity between Obama and Wright (and, earlier, with Louis Farrakhan) as much as religious relationships account for the pressure for Obama to publicly denounce the former leader of his church.

At the same time, Sen. John McCain’s religious supporters have received little scrutiny. Conservative Christian supporters such as the Revs. Rod Parsley and John Hagee have a long record of hate-filled statements about Islam, Judaism, Catholicism and most anything besides their form of Christianity.

White Republican candidates have not faced similar pressures to repudiate views of other politically vocal conservative Christian leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, who have long pointed to evidence of God already having “damned” America in catastrophes such as Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina. They just disagree with Wright on what sins ought to provoke divine wrath.

The rhetoric that has brought Wright into the spotlight is a distillation of the dual experiences of hope and alienation that have always characterized the African-American religious experience. Wright’s call for God’s judgment is not a rejection of either the Christian faith or the American nation. Rather, like his forebears, Wright’s preaching is an affirmation of religious and democratic ideals and a call to uphold them. The uproar over Wright’s preaching is not because he is wrong, but rather the uncomfortable realization he is right.