Barack Obama, seeking a win in South Carolina after consecutive losses to Hillary Clinton, has been taking his message to Christian voters this week -- answering questions for a spiritual Web site and a Christian TV network about concerns over controversial statements made by his spiritual adviser and a stream of malicious e-mails questioning his faith.

Leading in South Carolina's Democratic primary polls in part on his appeal to many of the church-going African-Americans who make up half the state's Democratic base, Obama gave a rousing speech at a rally Wednesday in which he urged voters to trust in hope and not fall weary to inaccurate claims being made about him.

"I've seen this country's judgment clouded by fear -- fear of terrorists, fear of immigrants, fear of folks who don’t look like us. Black fearing white, white fearing black. Our politicians are exploiting that fear for their own purposes. I know how hard it is to change those mindsets.

"But what I also know is this: that nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened except (when) somebody decided to hope.... There's a moment in the life of every generation when that spirit of yes, we can, that hopeful spirit has to come through, when we cast aside the fear and the doubt and decide wer'e going to shoot for something better," he said

But while the charges made against him may be fear-mongering, the Illinois senator still has been forced to explain his relationships.

The Democratic presidential candidate is a longtime member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, whose Web site describes the congregation as "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian" and whose roots in black liberation theology entreat it to remain "'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization."

The church's leader, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is retiring in a month, but his sermons and frequent denunciations of "white America" along with his support of black separatist Louis Farrakhan have forced Obama to answer for his pastor.

"It's a tricky thing, anybody's relationship with their pastor," Obama told Beliefnet.com, a multi-faith site dedicated to spiritual awakening.

Click here to read the Beliefnet interview with Obama.

"People who are familiar with the black church tradition know that Reverend Wright's considered one of the greatest preachers in the country. Our church, Trinity United Church of Christ, even though it is part of a 95-, 97-percent white denomination, very much draws on the historical black church tradition, and Reverend Wright's sermons do as well. And that means that sometimes he's provocative in ways that I'm not always comfortable with and in ways that I deeply disagree with occasionally," Obama told the Web site.

Addressing his congregants last week, Wright was quoted saying that, as president, Bill Clinton had done for black people what he had done to Monica Lewinsky. In a 2006 radio sermon attributed to him and now being circulated on the Internet, Wright lists what he says are America's evils: its role as the No. 1 killer in the world, its imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, its support for Israel without regard for Palestinians, its radiation experiments on citizens, its creation of the AIDS crisis and its refusal to help blacks in this country.

In the sermon, Wright says America is selfish, self-centered, arrogant and ignorant. "In light of all these facts," he says, "God has got to be sick of this s***."

Asked to explain his church's outlook, Wright told FOX News' Hannity & Colmes last year that "white Christianity" has been a part of racism and slavery, and that black liberation theology doesn't live according to "white" standards.

"We don't have to say the word white. We just have to live in white America, the United States of white America," he said in the March 2007 interview. He then explained that "the African-centered point of view does not assume superiority, nor does it assume separatism. It assumes Africans speaking for themselves as subjects in history, not objects in history. ... We're talking about something that's different. And different does not mean deficient."

In a statement last week to FOX News, Obama distanced himself from the decision of the church magazine's editorial board, run by Wright's daughter, to give Farakkhan the magazine's 2007 lifetime achievement award for social justice, named for Rev. Wright.

"I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan," Obama said. "I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree."

Nonetheless, Obama told Beliefnet that he is "proud of Reverend Wright and what he's done in his life."

Democratic stategist Jehmu Greene said the attention on Wright can't be good for Obama.

"I think there is absolutely the possibility that it is going to hurt Senator Obama," Greene told FOX News. "I don't think any campaign staffer at Obama headquarters is happy that they have to respond to the senator's name being put in the same sentence as Louis Farrakhan over and over because of his pastor."

Hermene Hartman, publisher of Ndigo newspaper and an occasional visitor to Wright's church, said it's unfair to link Obama to the issues surrounding Farrakhan.

"Whenever there is a black candidate running, the litmus test is Louis Farrakhan. We bring that up and that becomes some kind of benchmark, some kind of judgment," Hartman said.

"I think some things here for Trinity have just been taken so much out of context. It has been labeled a cult, it's been labeled racist, and it's just a misnomer, it's a mischaracterization."

Obama has been a member of Trinity Church for nearly 20 years, but he nonetheless has been forced to defend his religion as an e-mail campaign continues to claim he took the oath of office on the Koran, refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and attended a madrassa as a youth while living in Indonesia.

The candidate insists that all of those allegations are false.

Speaking to the audience at the Sumter, S.C., rally, Obama said he is tired of his opponents trying to sow the seeds of distrust and "hoodwink" people into believing the worst.

"They're trying to bamboozle you. It's the same old okey doke. You all know about, okey doke, right? It's the same old stuff. Just like if anybody starts getting one of these e-mails saying 'Obama is a Muslim.' I've been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, praying to Jesus with my bible. Don't let people turn you around because they're just making stuff up! That's what they do. They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you," he said.

He has explained that his biological father was Kenyan and was raised by in a Muslim household, but he did not raise Obama. The senator's mother was a white Christian and originally from Kansas. When Obama was still a child, she married an Indonesian and the family moved to Indonesia for several years.

"For two years I went to a Catholic school in Indonesia, and then for two years went to a secular school in Indonesia. The majority of children there were Muslim. But it wasn't a religious school," Obama told Beliefnet.

He added that he has "never been a person of the Muslim faith," but having been raised in a Muslim country and having "distant relatives in Africa who are Muslim," he said he is "less likely to demonize the Muslim faith. ... And I do think that that cultural understanding is something that could be extremely valuable."

Obama noted that even if he were Muslim, he doubts that his presidency would change the minds of Islamic extremists.

"You know, I think they would view me as a Christian and an infidel and a Westerner and they wouldn't view me any differently, I think, than any other American president," he said in the online interview.

But he said his background could appeal to ordinary Muslims in other countries and be beneficial for the next U.S. president.

"I do think that for the average Arab or Indonesian or Nigerian or Asian Muslim on the street that my familiarity with their culture would have an impact. I think that they would view America differently if I were president. ... That is something that could be used in a constructive way to open greater dialogue between the West and the Islamic world and that ultimately could make us more safe," he said.

Repeating his background again for CBN television, Obama said the e-mail campaign "is obviously a systematic political strategy by somebody because these e-mails don't just keep coming out the way they have without somebody being behind it.

Click here to read the CBN interview.

"I want to make sure that people are absolutely clear about what's going on with this, and if they get another one of these e-mails that they're deleting it and letting their friends know that it's nonsense," he said, adding that he is certain that someone is orchestrating the attack because the e-mails "come in waves, and they somehow appear magically wherever the next primary or caucus is.

"That indicates to me that this is something that is being used to try to raise doubts or suspicions about my candidacy. It's something, as you said, has been lingering from the start. It's one of the consequences of having an unusual name or having a father from Africa, even though my mother is from Kansas," he said.