Some people have very strong religious beliefs, but not everyone wants to hear about them, including friends. A lot of times it’s better just to stay quiet.

In today’s story, a woman broke into a fight with her friends over religion, but they really need to resolve their differences so they can be there for their friend.

Find out what happened…

AITA for angrily telling my friend to stop bringing up religion?

I (19f) have been apart of a friend group since middle school/beginning of high school.

One of my friends, that I’ll call Sarah, has been deeply depressed for the past two years, seeing a lot of psychiatrists, being on many different medications, and was recently admitted into a mental hospital.

They’ve been supportive of their friend…

Through that very hard time, we all try to support her as much as possible, which includes us going to visit her at least twice a week.

She’s been in the hospital for around a month and a half now, and we’ve gone to visit her many times.

Now, each time we visit her, one of my friends that I’ll call Mary, talks about religion.

They had history together…

For context, we were all in a private catholic school, and while some of us don’t believe in God or aren’t very religious, many of my friends are believers.

I know it was Mary’s way of trying to be supportive and to help Sarah according to what she personally believes, but it sometimes felt a bit insensitive.

She would say a lot of things like “I’ll pray for you”, “God will help you” every time Sarah talked about struggling, when Sarah mentioned how bored she was, Mary would say “You could read the Bible”.

She knows Mary meant well..

I know she meant to be nice and wanted to help, but it felt a bit weird, especially since we all know that Sarah doesn’t believe in God and has had some bad experiences with religion in the past.

The last time we all went to see her, which was two days ago, Sarah mentioned that it had been a really bad week and she had been having thoughts of …… you know.

It got intense…

When she told us that, Mary immediately screamed “You can’t do that, you’ll go to hell!”.

Considering the state that Sarah was in, and what she had just told us, I felt like this was the worst possible reaction.

I was a bit angry at her, and looked at her and told you something like “Could you stop bringing up religion for two seconds, not all of us care”.

After that, she got upset and ended up leaving the hospital.

They were all divided on the issue…

While most of my friends agreed with me and think it was inappropriate of Mary to say that, some are defending her, which has created a lot of tension in our group and a fight like this is the last thing Sarah needs I think.

So I tried to talk to Mary, to make things better and try to explain to her why I said what I said, but she got super angry at me and said that I was disrespecting her religion.

I feel bad about all of this, partly because Mary was a good friend so I’m sad that we’re fighting, but also because the situation is making it worse for Sarah.

She wants to make an effort but is conflicted…

I really want to fix this, so if I was in the wrong please tell me and I’ll try to understand and apologize to Mary.

And if not I’m not sure what else I can do to make her understand that I’m not insulting her or her religion. AITA?

That sounds bad!

Their friend really needs them and fighting amongst each other won’t solve any problems.

Let’s check out what folks on Reddit have to say about this story.

That’s right! This user knows no one can force religious beliefs.

This user thinks whatever Mary is doing isn’t helping Sarah heal.

Exactly! This user knows Mary is being unreasonable.

This user thinks Mary is being weird about the situation.

This user wants to know Sarah’s perspective on the situation.

Instead of fighting, the friends need to work together to be there for Sarah.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.