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Prophets do not always have a balanced view of reality. They are not people who have made a pragmatic adjustment to the status quo. Rather, prophets are people seized by a vision of God’s justice. They speak poetically and act dramatically, trying to move people to face truths that they’d rather not face. They make hyperbolic complaints, like Isaiah’s “No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly.” They do outrageous things, like walk around barefoot as a sign of a coming catastrophe.

Using some of his strongest language yet about his former pastor, Senator Barack Obama said that Jeremiah Wright’s comments capping the clergyman’s provocative return to the public stage were “destructive” and contradict “everything that I’m about and who I am.”

Obama, who had already distanced himself from Wright in a Philadelphia speech on race early in April, said the minister’s remarks at Washington’s National Press Club on April 28 had taken the controversy to a new level.