Barack Obama's former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, today criticised news media which he said had sensationalized his remarks concerning the September 11 attacks and AIDS virus.
But the Chicago preacher stood by the sermons that have dogged Mr Obama's presidential campaign since they gained public attention in March.
"You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back to you," Rev Wright said at the National Press Club when asked about a speech in which he asserted the September 11 attacks were retaliation for US foreign policy.
Asked about another sermon in which he suggested the US government created the AIDS virus to kill black people, Mr Wright also did not retreat.
"Based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.
Mr Obama, who is battling fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for the right to take on Republican John McCain in the November presidential election, joined Rev Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ 20 years ago.
Mr Obama has distanced himself from Rev Wright's remarks and denounced some of his views, which many voters have interpreted as anti-American.
"Those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons," Rev Wright said. "I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?"
Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect of the Iraq war, received student deferments that kept him out of military service during the Vietnam War.
Asked about a remark - "God Bless America? No, God damn America" - that has been widely circulated online, Rev Wright said he had been quoting an Iraqi official.
"God damns some practices, and there is no excuse for some of the things the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn't make me not like America, or unpatriotic," he said.
Rev Wright (66) said the news coverage of his sermons showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the black religious tradition in America, which evolved over hundreds of years of slavery and repression.
"This is an attack on the black church," he said. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my momma and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition, you've got another think coming."
He said his church has a long history of political activism but also feeds, houses and educates thousands of needy people each year.
Rev Wright was cheered enthusiastically by many black churchgoers in the audience, who often groaned in exasperation when the moderator asked questions submitted by journalists.
Rev Wright, too, often challenged his questioners. He asked the moderator when she had last been to church and what her pastor had said there.
Others he dismissed as ignorant. "You haven't heard the whole sermon? Well, that nullifies that question," he responded at one point.