Nice, sapient, hope your experience with a similar situation will help her out

I have a sort of similar problem, though slightly different, as it's my own mother. She brought us up to make our own decisions about religion, though she's a Methodist--and I'm grateful for that. However, I have one sister that's kind of Wiccan, one Agnostic, and me, the Atheist. She's now bothered by this, especially me. Now, understand, there was just no religion in my household growing up, and now, I'm 31 years old, and she starts sending me these God emails. I've asked her nicely to please stop, she didn't. I told her more firmly--pointed out that she knows what my beliefs are, and receiving these from her is blatantly disrespecting them--so she stopped for a little bit, but she's started back up again.

Our family history is a long story, but suffice to say, she's a Canadian that's been living in the States for over 30 years. I'm an American. My father died a few years ago, and since, she's met and has gotten together with a man, a fellow Canadian. I want to be happy for her, but here's the catch: he's good friends with Steven Harper, recently elected conservative leader, and he has tied with the Christian Coaltion. When they got toegther was about the time she started up with the emails again. I just got one this morning that, while not religious, is quite bigoted (my now deceased father was black, I'm white, she's white...I'm not understanding what the hell she's thinking). The emails is complaining about Lebanese-Canadians, and their immigration status and their ingratefulness--this is funny coming from a woman who lived in the States for so long and never got citizenship, but was married to an American, and most certainly enjoyed certain benefits that came long with it.

So, this combination of Christian-Conservatism is just something I can't deal with in my mother, who I've always know as being open-minded and quite tolerant. I know I got a little off-topic with the bigotry, but does anyone have an advice about how to deal with religiosity in one's own mother (which is quite different than one's mother-in-law)? I've just lost my father, and I sort of feel like I'm now losing my mother--this draw towards religion of her side (and the constant disrespect towards my beliefs) is going to put a serious strain on our relationship, which as always been quite close.

Sorry for the length of this post, and I realize I'm quite new here...but any advice regarding this sensitive situation would be appreciated.

Great advice Marthasplatterhead.

I have a term I commonly use for this. People often say, "I lost a friend to cancer," or "I lost a friend to hodkins." Well theism is a disease of the brain, a mental condition, and often those afflicted are metaphorically braindead. I say "I lost my mother to Christianity" or "I lost my mother to Jesus."

I know it's sad, I realize that, I don't say this out of hate or anger, I say it because it's reality. A hard thing to accept.