I went to a private Christian school from sixth to ninth grade. My parents had originally been looking at it for my brother, but when I got hold of the brochures, everything looked so fancy that I decided I wanted to go, too.

It was an educational decision more than a religious one. My parents weren’t concerned about the increasing secularity of the public school system — this was right around the time the “moment of silence” replaced the morning prayer in this particular school system — the decision was due more to an at the time inept elementary school that routinely inflated grades (seriously).

The Christian aspect was a bonus, having grown up in a Methodist church, but looking back years later, I can honestly say the time spent at that school was one of the most eye-opening religious experiences of my life, and not in a good way.

Allow me to clarify for a moment why I’m writing this: last Thursday, The Tuscaloosa News published a letter to the editor in response to a recent decision by the Tuscaloosa County school system not to ban same-sex couples from attending prom. A Northport resident concerned about the growing secularism of public schools wrote the letter, titled “Schools should not accept homosexuality,” and in it stated, “No wonder so many parents today are struggling to pay for private schools or educate at home. Our school systems lack morals and a backbone to stand up to organizations that support homosexuality and immoral behavior.”

While I largely disagreed with the letter in its entirety, this particular passage caused me to pause and reflect on my own experience within a private Christian school.

The first person I ever heard admit to being an atheist was a good friend of mine who also attended the school. He wasn’t always an atheist — he, like all of us, came a from a home of WASP parents — but over the course of a few years, he eventually broke it to me in his basement that he no longer believed in God.

We both attend the University of Alabama now, and a few weeks ago, we had a discussion about spirituality and the like. He expressed some belief in the possibility of a greater being; a god figure, if you will. Taken aback, I asked him what happened.

He told me his loss of faith in grade school was as much about rebelling against the influences of the school itself as any real theological contemplation. The school was so overbearing, so heavy-handed in its execution of the Christian doctrine, that it essentially drove as many people from the faith as people whose faith it strengthened. I still keep up with friends who also graduated from the school, and I can say with certainty he wasn’t alone.

A year or two after I left the school, a well-liked student came out about his homosexuality. Needless to say, he was forced to find a new school. This drives home the point made by the letter to the editor, because her chief concern was the embracing of homosexuality as a normal part of life.

When I transferred away from the school — again for academic purposes — something my dad mentioned always stood out to me about why the mission of the school was so poorly executed.

He said he believed Christianity was a tool to be used to bring people into the greater family and that people who want to pull you away from your faith will always exist, but that they should be embraced.

He said what he noticed about this particular private school was that they used the religion, not as a tool, but as a shield to keep the bad people away. To throw out the heathens and preserve the pure way only for the ones who believe.

And I agree with him. This was my specific experience with a single school, but if this letter to the editor was any indication, it’s not an isolated attitude among private schools.

These religious schools shouldn’t be viewed as a last bastion of purity; they should be used as a beacon of what makes any given religion exceptional. The “us against them” attitude ultimately creates a more secular society, as the author fears, not a strict adherence of separation of church and state, which I commend Tuscaloosa County for upholding.

John Davis is the chief copy editor of The Crimson White. His column runs Mondays.