In her memoir, poet Annie Dillard tells us that she left the church as a teenager. On Sundays, her father dropped her off at the door and kept driving. He never attended. The building reeked of affluence and pretension. By the time she was a teenager, she grew disturbed by the hypocrisy of what she saw: a barefoot Jesus depicted in a gold mosaic, the minister’s affected accent and parents who forced her to attend when they did not. Her anger simmered and she decided to quit.

One day, the church secretary called to make an appointment for the minister to meet with Annie. Her mother asked why and discovered the precocious teenager had written a letter to resign from the church. Both parents were appalled. Her father suggested she should have slipped away quietly, as many people do, making no fuss.

The meeting date arrived. Annie met with the pretentious minister. He listened for a while and said, “This is rather early of you to be quitting the church,” adding under his breath, “I suppose you’ll be back soon.” He figured there was nowhere else for her to go, but of course, he was wrong.