Turns out my Christian family isn't so Christian after all ;)

My grandmother recently died. We're a pretty matriarchal family so everyone got together to celebrate her life after the viewing and before the funeral.

It turns out my brother is an active atheist. My cousin is a closet atheist (he's a cop in an office filled with fundamentalists so he has good reason to keep it a secret I think). His 10 year old daughter is already figuring out there's no god or gods (I'm very proud of her ... who else was an atheist at 10?). And my other cousin who is a youth minister is very, very liberal and progressive and not in the least bit fundamentalist or literalistic. We're even having an on-going, friendly and fulfilling debate/conversation about Christianity, the new atheism movement and how to combat fundamentalism!

The next morning at the funeral, one of my grandmother's in-laws gave a sermon. My grandmother was a pretty devout Episcopalian so the fact that there was a sermon didn't bother me (it's exactly what she would have wanted) but he went waaay to far in evangelizing. It was terrible. The only good thing to come out of it was that practically the whole family agreed he went too far.

Though I'm sure my grandmother would be somewhat disappointed in all the atheists in her family, I'm proud of her for bringing such intelligent, rational and ethical people into the world. It's just too bad it took her funeral for me to see it. Talk to your family about atheism and religion, you might just be surprised with what they believe.

EDIT: Thanks for all the positive responses and for sharing your own stories. I enjoyed reading all of you comments.