Me, my wife, and my brother-in-law hid in the kitchen to avoid the family prayer that no one but my grandparents care about. My wife has never been religious in her life, my BIL is ex-Mormon, and I'm ex-Christian (generic Protestant variety). I've been an atheist for 15 years, and told my parents 14 years ago. Still can't tell the grandparents yet though, just gotta suffer through the motions until they die. My grandpa will literally make everyone repeat "amen" if not enough people said it to his liking. I hate it.
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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I feel this.
Ex-Christian here (Assembly of God Protestant) and I’ve been an atheist for a couple decades. My grandparents (both sets) were Christian but my parents never forced me into religion. I found it myself as a teen and my parents supported my interests even though they weren’t particularly religious. My Dad was more atheist in his last decade or so but my Mom was never really able to escape her whole religious upbringing even though she never practiced it.
My friend’s parents though… my small and rural hometown was predominately Christian. I left for 20 years, lived on three other continents in various countries and then moved back home for family reasons. It was hard to just be out and open about being an atheist in this community. Lots of defending my beliefs against simplistic religious indoctrination, ie “how can you have a moral compass without god guiding you?” or “if you don’t follow the 10 commandments how can you be a good person?” but it is worth it all in the end to just be yourself. It has gotten easier as I get older and I have found the more I talk about it the more likeminded people tend to come out of the woodwork to talk about their atheism. I’ve been surprised how many there are nowadays in what used to be a backwoods cowboy town.
I get it though, both my parents have died within the past 5 years, my grandparents have been gone for longer. Some of my friend’s parents have passed as well. Some I regret not telling or being able to talk about it with them and some I intentionally hid that aspect of me from them, not for my sake, but for theirs. I loved my grandparents and they didn’t need that drama so I held onto it for them. And that is ok, that compromise for other’s sake is a part of being a family.
Maybe someday you will be the patriarch/matriarch of your family and I hope for you that you project to your kids and potential grandkids that they are able to be whomever they want to be (within reason, let’s not promote serial-killing or other objectively horrible career paths) and that a belief system is not a prerequisite for being loved and accepted without judgement.
I hated it too but you’ll get your day once the sun sets for them. My advice, even though you didn’t ask for it, is enjoy whatever sunlight is left, in whichever way you can, for however much is left of their day because the sun will set for them eventually. You will never get back the sunlight they bring once it gone. For both your sakes, try to look past the clouds and recognize that sunlight while you still have it.
Thank you for the heartfelt reply. It's definitely a bittersweet thing. My grandparents (specifically my mom's parents are who I'm referring to) are starting to have more and more health problems so it feels like the final decline is here and we just don't know how fast it is yet. So I try to spend as much time with them as I can, but the religious guilt is overbearing. It's not the first time it's been a problem with them either, my mom cut contact with them for a while when she changed to a new denomination they didn't agree with and were really mean to her about it.
Things got better for a while after we patched that relationship, but in their sunset years here they have slipped back into using religion and now politics as a weapon (one guess who they are vehement supporters of, and they can't seem to understand that we would rather just not talk politics with them). We have a much healthier and richer relationship with my dad's mom who is a much more tolerant and kind person, as are my parents who have never made me feel less a part of the family for not being religious.