My friendship with an Evangelical Christian who believes gay people are going to hell has made me a better person. 

We met at the beginning of my semester abroad. I immediately pegged him as a player – he asked for my number with easy charm while maintaining intense eye contact. Not for me, I thought. However, the situational nature of friendships while abroad – with a finite amount of time to form connections – did not permit my snap judgements. We ate with our mutual friends each evening in the dining hall, we went hiking, we played cards. We became friends. I knew he was an Evangelical Christian but I didn’t know what his stance on homosexuality was until a mutual friend informed me. 

Evangelicals interpret the Bible directly, as inerrant and sacred. Whilst other denominations interpret the Bible as metaphorical or parabolic, Evangelical Christians view the Bible as a historical source. Therefore, my friend believes that anyone who acts on sexual impulse before marriage will go to hell. Acting on gay impulse is a sin and he believes that Christians who are gay should go to conversion therapy. I should note that all of these stances have been relayed to me by a mutual friend. I have never engaged in a conversation about his views on homosexuality (although we have discussed and disagreed on other beliefs he holds) nor do I want to. 

The news arrived like a punch to the gut. I had only just settled into a new environment and the group of friends I had made represented solace in the unknown of living on a different continent. This tether to comfort felt like it was shredding. How could I maintain my own values and morals when I was friends with someone who believed queerness was a sin, a one-way route to damnation? What would my friends back home think? 

My friendships with queer people at Trinity have brought me star-blooming joy. There is an unexpected but logical shorthand built into these friendships: I have a place with them, they have a place with me. Before attending college, I was not out to the majority of people in my life. I had one close queer friend; I was not yet sewn into queerness. I was fortunate that coming out was not a particularly strenuous ordeal barring the occasional hiccup (such as my mum lamenting she could not give me sex advice now). I have also been fortunate in the respect that I cannot recall any instance of political disagreement with my friends at college. This made the experience of facing so much divergence in political opinion during my semester abroad all the more jarring. My instinct was to lean away. The finite nature of the time I would be spending with this new friend rationalised this decision: he was a fair-weather person, situational and easily avoidable after I left this strange, transient life. 

Fairweather or not, I am grateful for our friendship. Although we have divergent ways of seeing the world, we both approach our friendship from places of love. He has gently invited me to join him at mass on Sunday and I have gently refused. For him, salvation is not guaranteed, and he wants his friends to be with him in Heaven. He is coming from a place of love and he has never overstepped in terms of projecting his religious beliefs onto me. If he had, I am sure I would feel differently. 

Though there will always be a limit to our friendship, I don’t think this limit negates the value of our relationship

Although I do not respect or agree with many of his views or beliefs, they have never negatively impacted my mental health. Our friendship is possible because of that, as well as the boundaries we have in place – such as not directly discussing his views on homosexuality. The intentionality of this grey area (via lack of direct communication) has created the space necessary for a functional friendship. While our differing views cannot be ignored, foregoing hyperfixation on these differences has been necessary for the friendship to be more than a social experiment of sorts. Though there will always be a limit in our friendship, I don’t think this limit negates the value of our relationship; rather, it enables its existence. 

Over the past couple of years, I have found that compartmentalising friendships – with this friend abroad as well as others at home – has helped me maintain them. I have stopped trying to make certain friendships into everything, inadvertently rendering them nothing. Different friends serve different purposes. I do not have a lower standard, I simply have different standards for each person. Since this adjustment I have been more open to having – and keeping – people in my life. While we will never be as close as I am with other friends, our friendship is still meaningful. There is still value in friendships that cannot offer you the world. 

While abroad, I was told repeatedly – and was forced – to get out of my so-called “echo-chamber”, meaning an environment that operates as a hollow mirror within which opinions and information function solely to reinforce your own. An echo-chamber is essentially a catastrophic failure at openness. I found that the accusatory echo-chamber thrown my way was an attempt at unravelling the validity of my own views and opinions. Whilst I (clearly) think that remaining open to people and information is important and beneficial, this openness is not interchangeable with compromise. Disagreement is useful and friendships can – and should – be navigated around them. Concrete settlement of disagreements where one person admits they are wrong and the other is crowned as right are unrealistic. Though I disagree with many of my friend’s beliefs, they are his own. I do not have to respect or agree with them, but equally, I do not have a right to tell him to get out of his echo-chamber. 

My friendship with an Evangelical Christian has expanded my capacity for tolerance and setting boundaries – I am a better person and friend for it. While stepping outside of your echo-chamber is essential every now and then, openness doesn’t require agreement. Friendships do not require complete alignment to be meaningful. The limitations in our friendship and a willingness to navigate the grey areas, were ironically what allowed it to thrive. Even if our friendship is forecast as fairweathered, it has enabled a solidification around the edges of my identity and has allowed for meaning in my quieter friendships.