At the risk of being accusd of being a racist, I'm going to throw my couch in here and psycho-social-analyze (coughbullcoughchitcough). 

Obama was born to a white woman who had the poor judgement tomarry an already man despite the dissaproval of both sets of parents and two years after Barak's birth, the father turns into a dead beat father (as he appears to have been with the children he had first with his first wife).  While this would be shrugged off in this day and age, in Obama's youth it could not have been a common nor an accepted thing for woman to be an unwed mother, let alone a parent to a bi-racial child.  I think she strove to provide Obama with opportunties and education, however that he could never quite reconcile his white and black parts.  Having suffered his first rejection (his father's departure) he then suffered his second (his mother sending him to his white grandparents) where his struggles with his idetniy and self-confidence/doubts resulted in conflict with his grandparents, an inability for him to deveop a close relationship with people who he likely blamed for his father leaving, and of whom he thinks of as 'typical white' people, he turned to abusing substances in highschool despite having a relatively privaledged home environment. 

When Obama left to make it on his own, he went searching for acceptance, for something he could relate to and he gravitated towards people who spoke to his underlining dissatisfaction with his view of the world... and his need for a father figure.  His mother had lied to him for many years about the man his father was- the reality of Senior being a drunk who died in a car accident, having fathered several chidren and been really something of a dreamer-ne'er do-well... ah, and whath does he find? A large black population where he's steered in the direction of powerful black voices who are saying things he's always felt, but getting away with it in the public forum in the guise of being a charitable/religious organization.  He sat in a theatre of hate for twenty years, knowing full well the words that were being said, the message that was being perpetrated, and learned how to give speeches that would strike the chord to garner just the sort of support he wanted.  He used the church to further his career asperations and then blithely pushed it aside (as Oprah had to the same church) when it interfered with his future goals.

People know so very little about Obama and what he stands for as he is either deliberately refraining from sharing due to fearing a misstep that could hurt him (heck, nevermind the coke, the druggie room mates, and so forth).. but I suspect it's because he does not really know what he stands for, who he is....

If he sat in that church for twenty years and did not believe in what they have said, then he has not denounced them long or hard enough and should be ashamed of rising to his position on the backs of the poor (now wait a minute, Wright has a damned fine house in a fine white, gated community.. god damn) who put their trust in him. 

His "Uncle" is no doddering old fool, but an agitator.   It's not just an association, it's a doctrine he lived and breathed for twenty years, celebrated his marriage with, and introduced his children to.