For many black voters, the break between Sen. Barack Obama and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., presents a conflict between a new vision of race in America and civil rights-era disaffection toward the government.

On one side stands a 46-year-old man who came of age in the integrated 1980s. On the other is a 66-year-old pastor defined by the strife of the 1960s. Each is calling the nation to justice in his own way.

Many blacks in North Carolina grew up hearing the liberation theology Wright espouses, with its fiery denunciations of the powerful and the privileged. They understand that preachers, like Old Testament prophets, are there to call the government and its leaders to account.

Many also long for a more conciliatory stance -- one they see in Obama's presidential campaign.

"What we're witnessing is a generation that's lived into the benefits of the work carried out by the previous generation, carrying the mantle forward," said J. Kameron Carter, a professor of theology and black church studies at Duke University Divinity School.

These younger blacks are not rejecting the preacher-prophet tradition, they're trying to live it more deeply by calling attention to its ethos of reconciliation, Carter said. It's what Obama has tried to do throughout his campaign -- downplay race and aspire to be what he has called "black, but more than black."

"What I don't like is people continuing to act as though there's no progress," said Bishop George Bloomer, pastor at Bethel Family Worship Center in Durham. "I really hate it. There's a group out there waiting for something to happen to say, 'See. I told you.' But this is a land of great opportunity, and we have really progressed."

Some people expect Obama to share the views he heard at church about race or the U.S. government or AIDS. Yet few would make any such assumption of white presidential candidates, said the Rev. Peter Gomes, a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke Divinity School and the pastor of Memorial Church at Harvard University.

"We can't name the pastor of a single presidential candidate before this one," Gomes said.

The tendency to fuse Wright with Obama may be a part of the legacy of black leaders in this country. As an autonomous black institution, the church has fielded many political leaders, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton.

Part of the reason Obama has needed to distance himself from Wright is that "there's a fear with any black person in power that he'll exact some kind of vengeance or recompense. Obama is seen as a stealth candidate for that kind of thing," Gomes said.

Wright's views -- accusing the United States of terrorism, demanding an apology for slavery and saying he thinks the government could have created AIDS to extinguish racial minorities -- are not necessarily held by the majority of people within the black community.

Done out of love?

But many black leaders, regardless of their views, also do not see Wright's comments as incendiary or unpatriotic.

"God uses the preacher-prophet as a prosecutor to shock the sensibilities of the nation," said the Rev. William J. Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP. "It's not done out of hate but out of love, in hopes that the nation turns."

Barber pointed out that King, though he is remembered for preaching nonviolence, said provocative things, too.

"Everyone jumped on King when he said Vietnam was wrong," Barber said. "Now we look back and say he was right."

Still, many blacks are saddened to see the battle between Obama and Wright, especially as Obama is locked in a heated struggle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination.

And they also look to a time when blacks are not defined solely by their preaching or by their righteous indignation.

"Having grown up in a black church all my life, there's a great deal of reverence, respect and loyalty to the pastor, because he's the spiritual leader of our souls," said Rachel Massey, 32, of Wake Forest.

But Massey, like many who plan to vote for Obama on Tuesday, would just as soon see Wright step out of the spotlight.

"I think he's hurting the Obama campaign," she said. "We have to get back to the main issues."