“Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

First a small thing: I predict Obama will come to regret saying that the sermons he heard Wright speech “always” related to spiritual matters. That’s just the sort of unequivocal word that prompts investigative journalists to find the gotcha example that contradicts the statement.
More important, those first two sentences in this passage from his Huffington Post statement are key to Obama turning the Jeremiah Wright controversy from a potentially devastating negative into a positive. In addition to repudiating Wright’s statements (which he’s now done), Obama also has to further remind people that the main purpose of church (and Rev. Wright) is spiritual not political.
This serves two purposes. First, it reminds people that Obama is not Muslim. No kidding. I think every sentence of elaboration that Obama can offer about his walk with Christ will both help with the Wright situation and the “B. Hussain Obama” issue.
Secondly, it subtly highlights something that people find irksome about the way preachers play, and are depicted, in the political world. Most of the ministers that get TV air time in political season are political preachers, or what my colleague David Kuo calls “poli-pastors.” If you see Pat Robertson or James Dobson on TV enough you come to think that the purpose of most preaching is influencing politics. But the poli-pastors are the exceptions, not the rule. I’m not one who decries the religious influence in politics, but we should remember that most of what most preachers preach most of the time is spiritual not political.
By emphasizing that about Wright, Obama both helps with his political dilemma and also signals that he actually understands what it’s like to sit in the pew on a regular basis, and that for him, his spiritual home is mostly, well, spiritual.