Sen. Barack Obama with Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Barack Obama may have quelled a self-described political "firestorm" by quitting Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial "black liberation" church, but the bombastic pastor is preparing to set off a bomb in the homestretch of the Democratic candidate's campaign.

Wright has an "October surprise" in store for Obama, reports New York magazine, with the launch of a publicity tour for his new book.

Highlighting the story in the UK's Spectator magazine, writer James Forsyth calls it a "huge problem for Obama," with the controversy over Wright's racial and anti-American sermons and his friendship with Obama "returning to the news agenda just as undecided voters begin to make up their minds."

The Obama campaign announced May 31 the senator's resignation from his 20-year membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago after months of political damage from repeated media airings of video clips from Wright sermons and probing into the church's radical race-oriented theology.

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Wright, previously regarded by Obama as a spiritual mentor and adviser, retired this year as senior pastor of  Chicago church, but the minister maintains influence with an emeritus title.

In March, after the video clips began to damage Obama's poll numbers, the senator gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he denounced the pastor's remarks but refused to "disown" him.

In a January 2006 sermon, Wright called America the "No. 1 killer in the world" and blamed the country for launching the AIDS virus to maintain affluence at the expense of the Third World. The pastor reportedly said in a sermon just after 9/11, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." In a 2003 sermon, Wright encouraged blacks to "damn America" in God's name and blamed the U.S. for provoking the 9/11 attacks by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II and supporting Israel since 1947.

In April, Wright made a series of media appearances, including a stop at the National Press Club in Washington in which he reaffirmed his assertion the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself, contending American soldiers in Iraq have died "over a lie" and calling news reporting of his sermons an attack on the black church.

During the press conference, Wright scolded media for the frequent broadcast of inflammatory remarks from his sermons, saying it is "not an attack on Jeremiah Wright, it is an attack on the black church."

The session with reporters touched on the issue of Obama distancing himself from Wright's speeches by claiming he was not in attendance to hear the anti-America and racially charged statements broadcast by media

A reporter asked whether Obama regularly attended church and paid attention during sermons.

"He goes to church about as much as you do," Wright replied. "What did your pastor preach in the last week? You don't know?"

Wright said he would not stop criticizing the U.S. government if Obama becomes president, because the complaints are over policy, not the people.

The pastor told the candidate, he said, if elected and inaugurated, "I'm coming after you."

During Wright's spring media blitz, Obama, meanwhile, gave an interview to "Fox News Sunday" in which he admitted his relationship with Wright is a political issue.

"I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past," Obama told host Chris Wallace. "The fact that he is my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue. So I understand that."

Obama argued, however, "it is also true that to run a snippet of 30-second sound bites, selecting out of a 30-year career, simplified and caricatured him, and caricatured the church. And I think that was done in a fairly deliberate way."

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