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For Barack Obama, life was so much better as an underdog.

The Illinois senator desperately wants to close down the race for the Democratic presidential nomination with wins here in North Carolina and in Indiana next week. But he is weary, and he is getting only hurt from his friends.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Obama's pastor, defiantly confronted his tormentors in the media at a speech Monday before the National Press Club in Washington, where he condemned his critics as attacking, not him, but his faith.

"It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright, it's an attack on the black church," he declared.

"I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and march on the picket line," he said. "I come from a religious tradition where we give God the glory and the Devil the blues. The black religious tradition is different. We do it a different way."

Mr. Obama's pastor went on to say that he hoped the controversy surrounding his fiery sermons, in which he damned the United States for its legacy of racism and accused the U.S. government of using AIDS as a weapon against the black community, would spark a dialogue about the contribution of black liberation theology to American society.

But Mr. Obama doesn't need a new debate over the black church. He needs Mr. Wright to go away, far away, to some place without phone service, and stay there until after the general election.

"Some of the comments that Reverend Wright has made offend me and I understand why they have offended the American people," he told reporters at a media availability Monday. But "he's obviously free to speak his mind."

Mr. Wright spoke on Sunday, as well, at a gathering hosted by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit chapter, described Mr. Wright as "the hottest brother in America right now."

But Mr. Obama surely deserves that title, except that he is trying to portray himself as much more than a brother. For those attracted to his cause he offers a new hope: to reconcile America's racial divisions and galvanize the young into finally engaging in the political life of the nation.

But the energy of the Obama campaign is beginning to flag, after 15 months of endless campaigning. Reporters who have been travelling with the Obama campaign say that staff workers are visibly weary, and Mr. Obama himself has delivered a couple of flat performances at recent events.

He likes to say that "there were babies who were born and who are walking and talking now since I started" this race.

He used the line Monday before a packed auditorium of 5,000 wildly enthusiastic supporters at Trask Coliseum, at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

It was the same speech, with variations, that he has been using for months. And if Mr. Obama is tired, there was no sign of it here. The senator may have lost the last three primaries, but he has no plans of changing either the themes of his campaign or his approach to campaigning.

He decided to run for president, he told the crowd, because "I was convinced that the people no longer wanted to be divided. They didn't want to be divided by race, they didn't want to be divided by religion, they didn't want to be divided by region. They wanted to come together as the United States of America."

He dismissed those who predict that this chronic campaign will leave the Democratic Party in a shambles. "We will be united to make sure that a Democrat wins in November," he told them. "You can take that to the bank."

He admitted that his own campaign had become increasingly negative and aggressive in recent weeks.

"People start throwing elbows at you, you start to throw elbows back," he told them.

"None of us are immune from this kind of politics. But the problem is, it doesn't help you. Having politicians bicker back and forth doesn't help you."

His stump speech is heavily laden with swipes at pharmaceutical companies that obstruct health-care reform, at oil companies that stymie efforts to expand renewable energy, and he pointed out that Hillary Clinton takes money from them all.

"We cannot deliver on a better energy policy, a better health-care policy, better education, unless we change how business is done in Washington, unless you are setting the agenda," he declared.

"They will not drown out the voice of the American people when I am president." And yes, the crowd roared.

And when, during the question-and-answer session, Jean Weiss, 82, exhorted him to avoid attacks on Ms. Clinton — "you're better than that; bring us up higher than that" — he came down off the stage, gave her a big hug and asked her to be his running mate.

"She's got me fired up" he grinned.

Mr. Obama is on friendly turf in North Carolina, where a large black population in alliance with the state's burgeoning population of high-tech workers should deliver a solid victory.

But Indiana is everything. If Mr. Obama can take it, he refutes Ms. Clinton's accusation that white, blue-collar workers won't vote for him, especially in the Rust Belt states of the Midwest.

Ms. Clinton appears to have been energized by her victory in Pennsylvania last week. She was in Wilmington Sunday, where she challenged Mr. Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate: 90 minutes, with no distracting questions from moderators.

Mr. Obama turned her down, saying he was too busy, though everyone knows the real reason: She outperforms him in debates. It's a shame, because an unmoderated forum could be revealing, for both candidates.

But of course the 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were about a specific issue: slavery. This contest is about character, experience, change, hope. Americans have been watching these two Democratic candidates for more than a year. Here in North Carolina and in Indiana, voters won't need another debate to make their choice.

The question is whether Mr. Obama can reach down inside and find the energy and conviction he needs during the next seven days to convince these now all-important voters that they can trust him, that the hope is real, that change is possible and that experience isn't everything.

Next stop, Indiana.

Excerpts from Wright's appearance at the National Press Club:

"I stand before you to open up this two-day symposium with the hope that this most recent attack on the black church is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church."

On Mr. Obama's denunciation of some of his past remarks: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God Nov. 5 and Jan. 21. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.

"He didn't distance himself. He had to distance himself because he's a politician. From what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn't offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it. I offered words of hope. I offered reconciliation, I offered restoration in that sermon, but nobody heard the sermon. They just heard this little sound bite of a sermon."

On whether he should apologize for shouting in a sermon "God damn America" for its treatment of minorities: "God doesn't bless everything. God condemns some things. And dem, D-E-M, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices and there's no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic."

On anyone who says he's unpatriotic: "I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me. They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites and that which is looped over and over on certain channels. I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did [Vice-President Dick] Cheney serve?"