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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I suppose it is, but if education is important to them, most religious schools provide a better education than public schools, in fact requiring students to pass an entrance exam to demonstrate their academic ability. Many people that are not religious use private schools, religious or otherwise if their local schools are not up to their standards.
Could be for athletics. In my area, the giant public schools have stiff competition for starting spots on varsity teams. Our local Catholic school doesn't have that level of competition. A kid could be a star on our team or he/she could warm the bench or get cut at public school.
Or people might simply like the idea of a small school.
Not everyone who goes to a religious school is a member of the same religion. We've had Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim students at our Catholic school. We even have out-of-the-closet gay students. That does not make their parents hypocrites.
My parents aren't atheists but they sent me to a religious school whose beliefs they did not share because it was superior to the public schools in the area.
I live in a small town with two schools, one public and one Catholic. Many non-Catholics and atheists attend because it's a much better school (grades, long-term staff, funding from the church, less bullying). Our kids go there too (but we're Catholic).
It depends on what you mean by 'religious school'. There's the likes of Liberty University, and then there are schools with religious affiliations but with a decidedly non-fundamentalist religious imprint that is also fairly light. For example, my older son - an atheist, like the rest of my children - is at Macalester. It has an affiliation with the Presbyterian Church but it is non-sectarian and, frankly, you wouldn't know that it has any religious affiliation at all unless you went looking for it. Another nearby school - which my daughter looked at and another son in high school is looking at now - has a Lutheran affiliation that is more substantive that what is found at Macalester, but the school is still all about education and not about religion much unless a student wants to make it that way. My atheist wife completed her education degree at St. Catherine University, a Catholic school. Her curriculum included a religion course. In it, she was out as an atheist, and was fully welcomed and accepted as such.
You see, the common primary mission of these schools is education, not weeding out those who might not match the faith of the school's affiliation. So if an institution happily accepts and welcomes those who are non-believers, or of different religions or even denominations, why is it somehow hypocritical for someone to go to such a place for their education?
I trust you don't think it would be hypocritical for a believer to attend a secular university... right? Because you can rest assured that the tens of thousands of students on those sprawling public university campuses aren't all, or even mostly, atheists.
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