Jeremiah Wright had a steamy sexual affair

He almost wrecked Barack Obama's presidential dreams, and now firebrand pastor Jeremiah Wright has helped destroy a Dallas church worker's marriage - and her job, The Post has learned.

Elizabeth Payne, 37, said she had a steamy sexual affair with the controversial, racially divisive man of the cloth while she was an executive assistant at a church headed by a popular Wright protégé.
When word of the unholy alliance got out, Payne's husband dumped her, and she was canned from the plum job at Friendship-West Baptist Church, she told The Post.
"I was involved with Rev. Wright, and that's why I lost my job and why my husband divorced me," Payne said.
She refused to reveal when the adulterous affair started or how she met Wright.
But fellow churchgoers at Friendship-West "found out about the affair in the spring," Payne said.

At the time, she was secretary to the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a longtime Wright disciple.
In April, Payne organized a series of Texas public appearances by Wright, 67. Weeks before, Obama had disavowed his preacher of 20 years after Wright's anti-government rants came to light.
"Liz was by Rev. Wright's side day and night during those days," a church source said.
"It's all true," said Payne, adding that she has filed a wrongful-dismissal claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to get her job back.
In an ironic twist, Wright last night spoke at an East Orange, NJ, church revival on the subject of "unexpected problems."
"There's no such thing as a problem-free relationship," he told a packed Elmwood United Presbyterian Church. "In life, you'll have unexpected problems."