Every family situation is in some way different.
I grew up nominally Protestant even though my family didn't attend church. My sisters were in Job's Daughters, I think because my paternal grandmother's father was a 32nd degree Mason. It turned out that my father was either an atheist or agnostic, but never discussed it; he had become disgusted by the hypocrisy he saw in church, but attended faithfully to keep his mother happy until he turned 21.
I attended church with the family of the girl next door (life-long playmates, what with her being 8 days younger than I) -- they were so nominally Protestant that I still have no idea what denomination they were -- and was baptized in that church around age 11. A year later I decided I needed to get serious about it, so I started reading the Bible, on my own. Since I was applying nave literalism, I very quickly found that I couldn't believe what I was reading. Well, I reasoned, since I can't believe what I'm supposed to, I guess it's time for me to leave. I consider that to have been the right choice, but for the wrong reasons; everything I've seen since then, especially fundamentalist Christianity and "creation science", has confirmed my decision to have been the right one.
After having made that choice, I just simply stopped attending church. The only person I informed was my friend who couldn't understand such a decision. Then when I got married, it turned out that my wife couldn't stand Christians (was raised Catholic, but played hooky from catechism class) and my father-in-law is an atheist, so no problem there; myself, I have no problem with Christians and have many as friends. When I'm among Christians, I just don't bring it up, though if they ask which church I attend I will name the Unitarian-Universalist church I attended, though I am now inactive. And if they invite me to attend their services, I will politely decline; their services are so mindless compared to a Unitarian service -- when we attended a Lutheran service for family, my son, with years of Unitarian pew time under his belt, looked at me bewildered as if to ask, "What the hell is
this?" One fundamentalist friend finally did rope me into a service and it was even more mindless than I had realized.
So my situation was easy. Another situation would be that of a friend who used to be a fundamentalist Christian and even ran off to Europe to become a Bible smuggler. She's a non-believer now and actually I think that her family is relieved that she is. But she's very wary of being around believers, because she says that they are very hostile towards ex-believers.
Yet another situation was that of
Dan Barker, "America's leading atheist". He was raised in a fundamentalist family; his mother used to sing in tongues while doing her housework. He was personally called upon by God to go into the ministry and served many years as a travelling minister and missionary into Mexico. But then he slowly woke up and started thinking and reading and thinking some more, until he could no longer believe what he was preaching, at which point he stepped down. His fellow Christians' reaction was to try to reconvert him and, when that failed, they shunned him and pressured his wife into leaving him.
He tells his story in his book
Godless, in which he goes a lot easier on his ex-wife than he did in his speech that I heard around 1990. He also tells of how he informed his parents and their reactions, so that might be of some help. Though in his case, he asked his mother a few direct questions about her beliefs, including about eternal damnation, and within a few months of thinking, she also deconverted, followed by his father, a former professional musician, who was finally able to return to the music he loved, swing.
That happy ending is undoubtedly not what you want for your family, since I'm sure that you don't want to unduly influence their beliefs. Rather than make it appear "out of the blue" to them, you might appear to quietly and politely distance yourself from religious observance. Actually, they may have been seeing it coming for a while now.
As for a version of the letter that's less harsh, to start with sending out a letter could invite confrontation, which is something that I don't think you want. But working on a less harsh version of the letter could prepare you with responses for when it does come up. Like saying that you can't accept the Bible as you used to and being able to give some valid reasons for having such doubts. And finding a way to affirm to them that it's not something that they can talk you out of.
Like I said, every situation is different and you need to feel out how best to approach yours.
FWIW, that question of damnation came up for me too this past decade. In the wake of my son's death, some well-meaning people tried to "help" by trying to convert me. But because by their doctrine he would be damned, they were actually trying to get me to embrace a belief system in which my son would spend eternity in Hell. I am not such a monster as to wish that upon my son.
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