Based on a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible contained material unsuitable for children, a school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing ‘vulgarity and violence’.
The BBC cites the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper as reporting that the parent who complained said the King James Bible ‘has “no serious values for minors” because it’s pornographic by our new definition’, referring to the 2022 law passed by Utah’s Republican government banning ‘pornographic or indecent’ books from schools.
Most of the books that have been banned so far pertain to topics such as sexual orientation and identity.
According to the BBC, the banning of the Bible comes amid a larger effort by US conservatives in states to ban teachings on controversial topics such as LGBT rights and racial identity. Bans on certain books deemed offensive are also in place in Texas, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina. Some liberal states have also banned books in some schools and libraries, citing perceived racially offensive content.
The Utah decision was made this week by the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City after a complaint filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible they had on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.
The committee did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained ‘vulgarity or violence’.
The BBC reports that the Utah district is not the first in the US to remove the Bible from its shelves.
A Texas school district last year pulled the Bible from library shelves after complaints from members of the public opposed to conservatives efforts to ban some books. Last month, students in Kansas also asked to have the Bible removed from their school library.
[Image: Steve Buissinne from Pixabay]