UTAH, USA: A school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from middle and elementary schools for containing “vulgarity and violence”, BBC reported.
The decision follows a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible has material unsuitable for children. Utah’s Republican government passed a law last year 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.
The banning of the Bible comes amid a more considerable effort by United States conservatives in states to ban teachings on controversial topics such as LGBT rights and racial identity. Bans on certain books deemed offensive is in place in Texas, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina. Some liberal states have banned books in a few schools and libraries, citing perceived racially offensive content.
The Davis School District north of Salt Lake City made the Utah decision this week after a complaint was filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.
The committee didn’t elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence”.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper, 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 book-ban law.
The Utah state lawmaker who wrote the 2022 law had previously dismissed the Bible removal request as a “mockery” but changed course this week after calling it a “challenging read” for younger children.
“Traditionally, in America, the Bible is best taught, and best understood, in the home, around the hearth, as a family,” Ken Ivory wrote on Facebook.
The district’s ruling determined that the Bible’s content does not violate the 2022 law but does include “vulgarity or violence not suitable for younger students”. The book will remain in place in local high schools.
Bob Johnson, the father of a primary school student in the Davis School District, told CBS News that he opposes the Bible’s removal.
He said, “I cannot think of what’s in the Bible you would have to take out of it. It is not like there are pictures in it.” The district isn’t the first in the United States to remove the Bible from its shelves.
A Texas school district the previous year pulled the Bible from library shelves after complaints from members of the public opposed to conservatives’ efforts to ban some books.
The previous month, students in Kansas requested to have the Bible removed from their school library.
