Raising a child to think

It is so hard raising a child to think in a religious culture. Specifically, the culture I am most familiar with and my child is most exposed to is evangelical christianity. My father was a baptist preacher and I was raised in the church for most of my childhood. While we didn't go so far as snake handling, we did believe in speaking in tongues and a loud amen or hallelujah during services. Also included were baptism (by submersion - none of that sacrilegious sprinkling practiced by the evil catholics), alter calls, revivals, and good music.

For completeness, let me explain what I mean by "most of my childhood". My father "backslid" for a short period when I was less than 10 years old. I remember those days fairly well. My dad was drinking some and we spent time with family playing cards and having fun. I also remember my dad getting drunk one night and trying to kill himself so he could join a buddy who died in Nam. Oh yeah, he also let me try a beer one night. I hated it.

With the exception of the suicidal moment, these were fun times. Eventually, however, my dad came back to the lord and started preaching. (An interesting aside is that almost all the local preachers where I came from have a very colorful past. It seems you had to know the depths of depravity in order to lead other people away from those depths.) Back in church things just continued on for me as a kid. Church was always a drag but had to be endured. My dad would often quiz me on the sermon after church and I almost always had trouble telling him what he had preached about.

I need to say a little more on speaking in tongues. I remember one night in church when I was probably less than 10, I felt a lot of pressure to speak in tongues. So I made up some syllables and repeated them. Everyone was so happy - especially my dad. I never had the heart to tell him that I had made it up. That's a secret that has burdened me for 20+ years. I never tried to speak in tongues again. In fact, it seemed to be less prevalent in subsequent churches. Not sure why.

Anyway, to get back to the title of the post, it is very difficult to raise a child to think for themselves when they are exposed to my family and their beliefs. My niece told my daughter that she was going to burn in hell because she didn't believe in god. My niece is 6 and my daughter is 8. Although my daughter seems to let in roll off of her, I can't help but worry that she is seriously bothered by such statements. My wife and I have told our daughter that we don't believe in the supernatural but that when she gets older she will be free to figure it out for herself. She seems currently to be quite convinced that religion is crazy. It flies in the face of evidence. However, I still think she is somewhat bothered. It seems that most of the people she knows are religious and that makes it that much harder. Maybe I should seek out more non-believers for her to interact with. Why can't she just be a kid and worry about questions of purpose when she starts naturally wondering about them?

I hope to post more on this soon but for now, I need to figure out how to acknowledge the baptism of my niece (she's very excited) without compromising our beliefs. I want to show that we support others' rights to believe as they see fit in the hope that they will reciprocate.