Obama explains why he has resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ

It’s not easy to find news reports which contain Obama's exact words. His comments are moving and his pain is palpable. An experience that lasted 20 years has been truncated. Here is the link to the key press conference. Here are some key graphs from the past few hours:

“This is not a decision I come to lightly and frankly it's one I make with some sadness,” Obama told reporters during a stop in South Dakota. "Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized."

“I did not anticipate my fairly conventional Christian faith being subject to such challenge and such scrutiny,” he said in South Dakota.

To the question as to what church he and his family will join in the future:

I am not going to approach this as a political exercise. This is a deeply personal exercise about trying to express your faith. Now, you know Michelle .. our lives are fairly unsettled right now. We don't know how this nomination is going to go. We don't know how the remainder of the election is going to go. I am traveling all the time anyway. So I am gone on Sundays often times. We probably won't make any firm decision on this until January when we know what our lives are going to be like. In the meantime we will visit other churches. There are a number of churches if we are at home in Chicago that I visited in the past. The important thing is I am not going to approach it with the view of figuring out how to avoid political problems. That’s not the role of church. My -- again what I want to do in church is I want to be able to take Michelle and my girls, sit in a pew quietly, hopefully get some nice music, some good reflection, praise God, thank Him for all of the blessings He has given our family, put some money in the collection plate, maybe afterwards go out and grab some brunch, have my girls go to Sunday school. That’s what I am looking for.

I have been somebody who really has insisted that the Democratic Party reach out to people of faith and take issues of faith more seriously and have written and spoken about this in fairly extensive terms. It is something that I still believe that faith is a powerful force in our lives and should be part of our public conversation.

Thank you, Barack. Keep on insisting. The fact that you do means that you make a signal contribution to public conversation. For too long, issues of faith were banned from public discourse. For fear of hurting someone else’s feelings, we avoided talking about that place where our hopes and fear meet. A “civil religion” has always been one of the great strengths of the American political experience. It is appropriate to renew that legacy, not throw it away.