Banning the Bible

It has finally happened. In a season of frenzied book bannings, a Utah school district has banned the Bible as inappropriate reading for elementary and junior high school students. In its decision, the David School District cited “vulgarity or violence.” According to The Salt Lake Tribune, a parent had asked for review of the “sex-ridden” book last December, on the basis that the Bible contains, “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape and even infanticide … You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.” 

As ironically humorous as we may find the situation, it is appalling that children in the district’s 59 elementary schools and 17 junior high schools will not have access to the western world’s greatest work of literary art. Knowledge of the Bible is not simply a matter of religion. It is a vital key to understanding the visual arts, literature, music, and drama. 

It’s also important to acknowledge the truth in the parent’s contention. The Bible has some of the most horrifying stories of sexual violence ever put on paper. The story of the Gibean concubine in Judges gets my vote for the most terrible, but the Biblical narrative also includes the rapes of Jacob’s daughter Dinah and David’s daughter Tamar, the rape and forced child-bearing of Abram and Sarai’s slave Hagar, the decision by Lot’s daughters to get their father drunk and have sex with him, the human sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter (also in Judges).

Gustave Dore: The Levite Carries the Woman's Body Away

Even some of the comic episodes, such as the story of the Mandrake root involving the sister-wives Leah and Rachel, and the theft of Laban’s household gods, which Rachel hides by placing them under the pillow on which she is seated and then claiming that she is menstruating, are sexually charged.

March Chagall: Rachel Hides Her Father's Household Gods

These are not the stories we hear about in Sunday school – and I am willing to bet that many cafeteria “Christians” are unfamiliar with them -- yet they are critical pieces in the extraordinary tapestry of the Bible. Yet it is undeniable that, coupled with Leviticus’ detailed inventory of proscribed sexual practices, these Biblical stories could expose a child to a a thorough, if eccentric, education in sexual practices and mores. That’s not surprising. 

If there is a predominant theme in the Hebrew Bible -- what Christians call the Old Testament – it is God’s command in Chapter 1 of Genesis to, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it.” God forms covenants with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, and Moses in all of which He promises enormous fertility in return for faith and good behavior. It would be far too simplistic to characterize the Abrahamic religions as fertility cults, yet fertility is never far from the center in the Biblical narrative. The complainant in Utah is not wrong in contending that the Bible is "sex-ridden."

To quote the anthropologist Mary Douglas, writing of Leviticus's many regulations about sexual matters:

"Religions which ritualize sex are usually more in favour of it than against. To suppose that the numerous sexual regulations of Leviticus exhibit a narrowly puritanical attitude to sex would be like expecting a culture with numerous food rules to condemn good food. It is where sex is recognized as a potent elemental force, at once the source of desire, fulfillment, and danger, that religion seeks to appropriate sex and to bind it with rules."

So what’s the answer for a school district concerned with protecting children from sexually charged material? Well, one good answer would certainly be to be less obsessed with children being exposed to material with sexual content. The Utah case is a perfect illustration on how that obsession can (and should) backfire. Another would be to understand that children ask questions honestly when they encounter new ideas. Hiding things from them and/or lying about their meaning is never a good idea. Honest discussion in the classroom with a well-informed, caring teacher could help to undo the damage that ill-informed and prejudiced parents and clerics can inflict.

The Bible ban in Utah's second-largest school district is in a Mormon community, but lest anyone feel comforted by that, it should be noted that another parent has challenged the Book of Mormon (the sacred text, not the musical) in Utah schools.

In my opinion, what is lost in banning the Bible -- and many other important works of art and literature --  far outweighs any the challenge of answering uncomfortable questions a child might ask.

While I don’t believe that public education should ever embrace a single religious doctrine (or sexual orientation), I believe that we owe our children exposure to the world of ideas, and that emphatically includes religion. I believe in teaching religion in public schools in the same spirit that we teach literature: Examine important ideas that run through human culture, and look at the different ways that religious traditions deal with them. 

Allowing children to explore, especially a work as central to western culture as the Bible, gives students a license to inquire, something many parents seem to be afraid of, but which should be encouraged in any society.

We might actually end up with a generation of students less ignorant about religion, sexuality and other sensitive subjects than are today’s leaders.