Matt Stone is a Christian. He’s raising his children to be Christians. But he sometimes receives flak because he doesn’t send his children to a private Christian school.
Matt explains why he doesn’t want to “bubble” his boys:
I say again and again to those who ask: I’d rather our boys be exposed to [other religions], when we have maximum influence over them, than bubble them away from them till they reach university, when we have minimum influence over them. We say we’d rather they learn not to be xenophobic, not to be insular, that they’d learn to live with people from other traditions peacefully, that they’d learn to discern the real differences from real neighbours rather than the clichéd differences from dusty textbooks…
Say what you will about raising kids with one particular religion, I think this is a healthy way for these kids to grow up — surrounded by people of different faiths (or no faith), learning about what other people think and why they think it, regardless of what their parents will say back home.
The discussions about religion I had in high school with friends from different backgrounds were invaluable in helping me form my own views.
These kids will be better off because of their exposure to different kinds of people.