An editorial from The Register-Herald
BECKLEY, W.Va. — Of all the books in all the world, the one we are most surprised to see on the 2015 Top 10 List of Most Frequently Challenged books was the sixth one mentioned.
In case you missed the list in our Tuesday edition, the No. 6 most frequently challenged book in 2015 was … The Holy Bible.
The list is compiled annually by the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
By this measure, the Bible ranked just behind “Fifty Shades of Gray” and “I Am Jazz” and above “Two Boys Kissing.”
The reason for the challenge? Its religious viewpoint!
In a story in The Huffington Post, James LaRue, director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said that the Bible is sometimes challenged because of “sexual content inappropriate to minors” and “incitement to violence.” More often, he said, people mistakenly believe that just having the Bible in a library violates the separation of church and state.
LaRue maintains that as long as publicly funded institutions aren’t promoting one religion over another, it is not a violation.
He said it is essential for religious texts from many different faiths to remain in libraries.
“There are thousands of editions of the Bible in tens of thousands of libraries in the United States, along with other world religious texts — and that’s well within the First Amendment,” LaRue told Huffington.
But for us, it is his last statement — “Here in the home of the brave, free people read freely” — is the one that is the most significant.
The fact that some people want to censor what is read is in direct conflict with what we believe living in America is all about — our freedoms.
The ALA holds Banned Books Week annually to educate Americans about the ongoing fight against censorship in schools and libraries.
While we believe it is ultimately up to parents to decide what their young children should read, we also believe that no one has the right to determine what adults read.
Censorship stifles the free exchange of ideas. It eliminates the opportunity to be exposed to ideas divergent to your own, that could provide the stimulus to think about the differences and perhaps become more open to those ideas.
Reading about other cultures, religions and ideas holds a key to bringing our divided world closer together.
What they failed to recognize was the difference between reading about a religion and practicing that religion. There was no plot to try to convert the high schoolers to Islam. It was simply about learning to understand more about those who believe differently than the mostly Christian populace of local schools.
Intolerance is a growing issue in the United States. Closing off the road to understanding those who don’t believe as we do through censorship will worsen that issue.
That is why we come down firmly with the ALA in shining a light on these so-called “banned books.”
We are free to read anything we want. We should want to be exposed to other viewpoints. Just because you don’t believe something is no reason that others should be denied.
Pick up one of the books on the challenge lists which are compiled every year (available atala.org/bbooks). You could be surprised by what you find.
Who knew the Bible would be there?