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Obama's focus on racial reconciliation has a special appeal to traditional Bible-believers. Their concern about diversity has intensified recently, in part because of the growth in immigrant churches in the U.S., and by a new awareness that conservative Christianity is spreading dramatically in developing countries. Multiethnic churches are a rarity in America.

The turmoil over Wright could cost Obama these votes.

Barry Hankins, a Baylor University historian who studies religion and politics, predicted that Christian right activists would bombard less-politically engaged evangelicals with the message that they should be leery of Obama because of his pastor.

''That's where it's going to hurt him,'' Hankins said.

James Guth, an expert on religion and politics at Furman University in South Carolina, said Wright's comments haven't killed Obama's chances. The candidate has built up some goodwill and ''curiosity'' through his outreach to evangelicals, including appearing at a Christian AIDS summit hosted by megachurch pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay.

But Guth said he had always been skeptical that Obama's strategy would succeed with traditional Christians. Wright's views inevitably would receive extensive publicity, as would Obama's denomination, the United Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of the mainline Protestant groups that theological conservatives deeply distrust, Guth said.

''I just thought the 'beginning of the end' would come during the general election, not the Democratic primaries,'' Guth said. ''I don't think Obama has lost all the benefits of his earlier 'quiet' campaign among evangelicals, but this episode is certainly sets back those efforts.''

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