My religion was something I inherited long before I was old enough to have an opinion about it. I was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala. My father came from an old Orthodox Syrian Christian family with roots going back many generations. The church at Kallooppara is part of that history; my paternal grandfather and great-grandfather are buried there in prominent locations. Religion was not something I chose. It came with the family I was born into, the traditions around me, and the assumptions of the community in which I grew up. But my relationship with Christianity was never as simple as that background might suggest. I left…