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It's not surprising that church membership yields warm fuzzy benefits. Having a community united in common cause or belief, a place to go where you feel accepted, surrounded by people who are likely to help you out in times of need, these are fine things, though they can also yield the dreaded "us vs. them" herd mentality if said groups aren't vigilant. And there are other trade-offs. Membership usually involves an agreement, implied or explicit, to abide by certain norms, and not to question or dissent.
I can think of no better image to keep on one's mental screen than those photographs of lynchings in the South. In them, you see groups of genteel church-going folk, dressed in their Sunday best, smiling with warm satisfaction as a body hangs from a tree limb above them. (No matter how happy we are in our spheres of choice, we should keep such images available to our consciousness, and do the occasional gut check to make sure we aren't headed in a similar trajectory.) Churches can and often do achieve tremendous good. Many secular organizations have been studying how best to emulate the effectiveness of church groups in providing for charitable causes, disaster relief, etc. while avoiding the dangers that lurk in the shadows of complacency and conformity.
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