Not being African American, I cannot speak to Senator Obama's experiences with and connections to his church, Trinity United Church of Christ.  Having grown up a Southern Baptist and having stayed one long after I knew I should go, I can speak to my experiences.

Religious beliefs are central to a person's core and unique to each of us.  No matter the catechism or doctrine of a particular faith, no matter our education, race or gender we all bring our personal selves to the religious experience or lack of it.  One of the smartest women I know - she made 800 on the math portion of the SAT - doesn't believe in evolution.  One of the smartest men I know doesn't believe he has a soul.  He does believe that born again Christians should never be allowed near the nuclear button since, he thinks, they are all so fired up to see their Redeemer in person.  I've tried to explain to that male friend that we aren't all suicidal for Jesus but faith is hard to explain to someone who wasn't brought up in the church or had some sort of "road to Damascus" conversion as an adult.  

I was raised a Southern Baptist, saved and baptized by immersion at the age of ten.  I can still recount long passages of scripture I learned while studying for my GA steps (if you're over forty and a Southern Baptist you know what that means) and know all the words to a whole lot of songs from the Baptist Hymnal.  Now at not quite 54, I am both a failed Baptist (ask them, they'll tell you) and a lapsed Episcopalian.

Like many young adults, I fell away from the church during my twenties and - like a lot of new parents - I came back to the church after the birth of my son.  I don't see how any person can look into the face of his/her child and not see proof that God exists.  Though already questioning my Baptist beliefs, I returned to the Baptist Church because my son and I were living with my parents at the time and both were strong Baptists.  I was working outside the home full time and in order for my mother to get a little respite from child care during the day, my son was enrolled in my parents' Southern Baptist church nursery one day a week.  I began attending Sunday services and working in the nursery when my son was nursery age.  As he grew older I became a Sunday School teacher and Wednesday night services were added to our schedule.

Since I am both pro-choice and gay rights, there were right off areas of conflict between me and the Baptists.  While these are issues for adults to tackle, even Sunday School lessons for children presented me with a few difficulties which I solved with the stock answer of "ask your parents".  When my son turned twelve, the issues became a little pricklier.  He asked questions, questions that annoyed his Sunday School teacher (I having by then retired, only the very dedicated can teach Sunday School for more than five years).  Things came to a head when a friend of my son's from school visited our church one Sunday.  The little boy was Buddhist (here might be a good time to drop in that my son's father is Jewish but my son has received no education in Judaism, although he does often refer to those of the Jewish faith as "my people") and my son was quite offended by the way in which the Sunday School teacher dismissed Buddhism.  As the unwashed have learned from having W. as our President, it is the duty of born again Christians to bring non-believers to Christ, that includes twelve year old Buddhist boys who are making a one time visit to church after having spent the night with a Baptist friend.  As I later learned, my son expressed his disapproval of his Sunday School teacher's proselytizng rather vehemently. 

Sometime during the week following the "Buddhist Incident" I received a call from my son's Sunday School teacher.  It began benignly enough, he was after all thirteen and had not yet walked down the aisle to make his public commitment to Christ.  By the time a child hits the teenage years the eternal life insurance policy bought by childhood's innocence has lapsed and he/she thus becomes subject to burning in Hell fire.  (I'm not quite sure if one burns in the same Hell fire as Hitler but, hey, if one is burning, does it really matter how hot the flames are?)  Being both a good mother and a little short on time, I assured the caller that I would speak to my son about the precarious state of his soul.  To which she replied, "Well, he will have to get his heart right before he can join the church."  I was stunned into momentary silence.  I know of few people in the world whose hearts are righter than that of my son.  I recovered to answer, "My son's heart is just fine, thank you and you can take us both off of your call list."  The next week we began our search for a new church home. 

For all of the time that I had been taking my son to church, teaching Sunday School and going to services I had been uncomfortable with both the doctrine and the practice of Southern Baptists; however, the thought that a child needs to be exposed to religion and my own cowardice and sloth had trumped those doubts (plus I liked the music, much as I liked the ritual of the Episcopalian service).  Many of my son's school friends were members of the Southern Baptist church we had attended.  It was comfortable.  I didn't have to ask what the symbols meant, didn't have to watch others stand and kneel in order to do make the right moves, I didn't have to listen to my mother tell me that Episcopalians are only one step removed from Catholics and we all know that Catholics worship statues.  On the whole, except for the matter of getting my son's heart right, being a Baptist was the easiest path to take.  For me and my son, though, there came a time when our gut feelings had to override our souls and that, I believe, was our true salvation.