A couple of summers ago, my husband and I attended a wedding that took place just outside Missoula, Montana, where one of our sons lives.  The groom is an incredibly nice man whose family is from India.  He and his family are Christian, not Hindu.  His uncle, who participated in the wedding ceremony, is a minister in the Pentecostal Church.

During the ceremony, it became obvious there is a philosophical and theological divide in the groom’s family.  His generation, born in the United States, has rejected the values and beliefs, though not the religion, of the older generation.  The women of the older generation are diffident, speaking only when spoken to, wearing only traditional Indian dress.  The women of the younger generation are liberated American females.  The “best man” at the wedding, in fact, was actually the groom’s sister.  There were covert smiles passed amongst the younger generation, males and females, at the words of their uncle, who preached subservience and obedience for the bride, dominence for the groom.  It was clear, while the younger generation respects its elders in that family and holds very closely to its Christian beliefs, it does not accept its old, rigid patriarchal mores.

It wasn’t clear to me until after the wedding just how rigid those patriarchal mores are.  Because my father was a pastor in South Africa, and because the Indian preacher had also been a pastor in South Africa, I thought it quite appropriate to talk to him about our connection, but, …