Easy story, easy decision.

But the problem with that narrative is that the reality of active church membership is never so simple. Even if you start off going mainly for the preaching, unless you make a beeline for the exit right after the organ sounds its last note, you're going to find yourself getting into a whole lot more.

Going to church regularly means involving yourself in a community. Over cups of coffee after the service, or teaching in the Sunday School, or pounding nails in neighborhood projects, or slinging a paintbrush to touch up the church hallways, you will get to know your fellow congregants. You hear about the pleasure they take in their kids, their concern about their parents, their fears of illness, their rejoicings at unexpected good fortune. They become part of your life, as you become part of theirs.

That makes leaving a church a big deal, not something to be done lightly. I know plenty of people (like me) who have done so out of necessity, because we've moved to another city. The partings are not easy. And I know plenty who have left churches, too, because they simply found they could no longer abide something important--really important--going on there, whether it was coming from the pulpit or some of the people in the congregation. In either case, it's an uprooting. You have to hope you'll be able find fertile soil elsewhere in which to replant yourself spiritually.

Was Obama "right" to quit Trinity, to shake the dust from his feet and permanently walk from a place in which he had so long found sanctuary? He'd been there 20 years, nearly half his life. Only he knows exactly what he was thinking. But I doubt--and I certainly hope for his sake--that it was not an easy decision to make.