Barack Obama gave an amazing speech about race and religion in America this morning. Appropriately, he gave it at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, because it was a very American speech. You can read it and I’m sure you can watch it somewhere [update: here].

It blew me away. I’ve never heard anything like it from a presidential candidate. I’ve never heard a politician speak so honestly, intelligently and insightfully about the racial and religious divide in this country.

It appears to have been prompted by the Rev. Wright comments. But he used the opportunity to speak not just about Rev. Wright but about larger issues. He explained the source of Wright’s anger without justifying it. He explained what Wright has meant to him personally, even though he thinks many of Wright’s views are deeply flawed.

He said that while Wright’s views come from a place of anger, so do the views of many working-class white Americans who blame their place in life on affirmative action, or who resent, rightfully, the implication that they themselves are somehow responsible for this country’s history of slavery.

I don’t even know what part of the speech to excerpt here, because passage after passage is insightful. Here’s a taste.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS…

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

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

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

I think this is going to go down as a legendary speech, on a par with Kennedy’s 1960 speech about his Catholicism.

Obama could have disowned Wright and quit his church. It might have been the easier thing to do. He could have been that calculating. Another politician might have thrown his friend overboard. But Obama has principles. He stood up for himself and defended someone who has played a meaningful role in his life.

I wonder if Obama is too smart and insightful to be President of the United States. But then I think to myself how wonderful it is that we finally have a candidate who doesn’t treat us like idiots – who has enough faith in us to appeal to the better angels of our nature.

I don’t know if that faith is justified; it might be proven wrong. But it’s so refreshing to see a politician take that gamble.