The Bible’s too violent for children - we need to ban it!

It was certainly a headline which grabbed my attention and paused my social media streaming: UTAH BANS BIBLE. And it wasn’t just one headline either, mainstream media shared the news that indeed, Utah school district had banned the King James Version of the Bible from all elementary and middle schools. Of course, Utah has its own religious complexities, but this is a development in the ongoing narrative of book-banning which has shocked many.

Pen America, (Pen.org) formed in 1922 to advocate and campaign for the right of freedom of written speech. They have noted an increase in the number of banned books particularly in recent years, and report that from July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles. Several instance of these have hit the international headlines over the last couple of years. Few of these have been based on a faith-based argument. The most common type of book banned (41%) are those which raise LGBTQ+ issues, followed by books which featured a main or secondary character of colour (40%).