My best friend since 1st grade has become religious in that last few years. She still cusses like a sailor, but she also has to “pray” about things and offered to pray for my granddaughter when she was born early.
I live in the South (USA), but was raised in West, and religion has never been part of my life, and never will be. Life is hard enough in the South for an atheist, but now my friend who shared the same viewpoint as me has completely changed and we hardly speak anymore. I have no real friends here because they are always at church or have established ties with their church friends so aside from my husband and kids, I am very lonely.
How do I maintain my friendship with my friend when I feel judged and irritated by all her religious talk? I have to hear all that stuff daily where I live.
Posted: August 23rd 2010
Leeta www
Hello,
Thank you for your question.
I don’t like to give advice to people regarding such personal matters, but I can tell you about my experience.
I am an atheist. I am also a leftist, progressive, and a staunch feminist. My closest friends in the world are evangelical Christians and Catholic. Roman Catholic. Latin Rite Mel Gibson Roman Catholic.
When we sit to have a meal together, they pray, I sit quietly until they are done, and we continue our evening.
When they ask me to come to Bible study or church, I decline, and they don’t prod.
When they begin talking about God with each other, I let them, and I just listen. Sometimes, I’ll ask a question or two.
Often, they tell me that “I just don’t know it yet”, but that really, I am a Christian, because I’m all the good things a Christian is meant to be. I thank them, because that is – if you think about – a really nice compliment.
On my end, I am not combative with them. They are comfortable being Christians around me. I don’t roll my eyes, question their intelligence, or insist they don’t know what they’re talking about.
On their end, they are not combative with me. If they secretly judge me, which most likely they do, I don’t know it, nor do they treat me differently, so it doesn’t matter. We spend a lot of time together doing non-religious things, but sometimes, they hang out only together, without me, at a religious occasion.
In the end, if you two really love and respect each other, then it should show in your actions toward each other. But it has to go both ways.
I hope this has been helpful.
Posted: August 26th 2010
Paula Kirby www
Oh dear, what a sad situation for you. I am sorry. I can also fully relate to the barrier that her new beliefs have put between you: I have experienced it twice, once when I became a Christian and then again, several years later, when I realised there was no good reason to believe what I had believed. There’s no doubt, it really can be an obstacle because whether we’re religious or not colours the whole way we look at life.
The only thing I can suggest is that you invite your friend over some time when it’s just going to be the two of you, and try to have a gentle conversation with her about it. Tell her you respect her right to her new-found religious beliefs and are happy for her if they make her happy, but that you feel sad that you don’t see as much of each other as you used to. Tell her you miss her, but that you feel uncomfortable with lots of religious talk, and ask whether you can’t just have an understanding between you that you’ll leave all talk about religion – both for and against – out of it when you meet: that you’ll just agree to disagree on that point and leave it at that. Tell her you’d love to go on being able to talk about all the other things you used to talk about – books, hobbies, gardens, whatever – without letting her religion or your lack of it come between you. Ask her whether she’d be willing to give that a go.
Keep it all friendly and warm, and avoid any suggestion that you are criticising her for her new beliefs. It’s a perfectly reasonable position to take with her: accepting the changes in her life whilst asking that she also accepts that you aren’t going to make them yourself.
A real friend would, I like to think, respond positively to this kind of approach. Unfortunately, religion – especially when someone is in the first flush of it – can have an all-or-nothing effect, and it is possible that she won’t currently feel able to compromise with you. If that’s the case, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do, except hope it’s not too long before she returns to her senses. Just try to avoid saying anything that would make it difficult or embarrassing for her to find her way back to you later: make it clear that your door is open, if she changes her mind.
I really hope it works out for you. I have experience myself of moving to a deeply religious area and finding it hard to find people on the same wavelength as me, even though things here are nowhere near as bad as in the southern states of the US – so I really do know how lonely it can be. Good luck.
Posted: August 23rd 2010