Banned Book Week

Whenever Banned Book Week rolls around I think of one of my favorite controversial books that many people consider entirely inappropriate for children. It’s called the Bible. 

If the Bible were a movie it would be rated PG-13 or stronger. A few of the stories taken out of context could easily lead to a call for the book to be banned. And yet the book is in most libraries. More often than not it isn’t even kept on the high shelves where children can’t reach it. 

So one can make a case that the book should be banned but one can also make the case that it is a good book. Some might even argue that it is The Good Book. I am reminded of a poem by an anonymous author that reads, 

Two people read the same bible.

One sees a reason to love.

The other sees a reason to hate. 

One sees unity.

The other division. 

One finds prejudice. 

The other equality. 

One discovers compassion. 

The other, indifference. 

One goodwill. 

The other malice.

Two people, one book. One book, two views. 

The book is a mirror. 

The reflection is you. 

The poem reminds us that any book can be seen in more than one way. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that a sermon can be foolishly spoken but wisely heard. A quote I find both humbling and hopeful. The quote humbles me by reminding me that my sermons may not always be as wise as I wish they were. The quote is hopeful for me because it reminds me that good people will find good things in sermons no matter what. 

In a similar vein, we might say, “A book can be wisely written and foolishly read.” In some ways a book is like a Rorschach inkblot test. What we see in the book tells us much more about ourselves than it does about the book. For instance, a book of children’s poetry written by Shel Silverstein was banned in some schools because some parents felt his work was anti authoritarian and encouraged rebelliousness. One example given was the following poem. 

If you have to dry the dishes

(Such an awful, boring chore)

If you have to dry the dishes

(‘Stead of going to the store)

If you have to dry the dishes

And you drop one on the floor—

Maybe they won’t let you

Dry the dishes anymore. 

Let me suggest that there is more than one way to interpret this poem. One can see it as anti authoritarian or one can just as easily see it as innocent tomfoolery. 

One of my favorite banned books is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee in which she makes two different statements about the Bible. The first is a positive statement. She wrote, “The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.” In other words, the Bible wasn’t written to think for us. It was written to help us think for ourselves. The second statement she made about the Bible contains a cautionary warning. She wrote, “Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.”

Many of the books being banned today are singled out because they deal candidly with America’s history of racism. There is a concerted effort by our elected leaders today to whitewash our nation’s history. The South is often called the Bible Belt so we may forget that the Bible was originally a banned book. Enslaved African Americans were forbidden to learn how to read and write. Anyone caught teaching enslaved people how to read or write would be fined and thrown into prison. Any enslaved person caught reading the Bible could be punished by the slaveholder with absolute impunity with whip and lash. The slave owners  were worried what might happen if their slaves started reading about Moses’ opposition to slavery and his work for the liberation of the Hebrew people from Pharoah. They were worried that these Bible stories might have the same effect as a Shel Siverstein poem. 

This may be one of the many reasons that the state of Florida has banned the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course, a class that allows high school students to earn college credit. For African Americans the Bible was once a banned book and now the same fate has befallen this particular AP course in the year 2023. For this reason there is a movement in many African American congregations to teach accurate history in the churches since it is increasingly forbidden in schools. 

The Reverend Kenneth Johnson of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Florida told a reporter, “I find it kind of disrespectful and even condescending to have our governor or anyone tell us what we’re allowed to learn…History is history… if we’re going to be who we’re called to be we have to know what we’ve been.” He warned that history might repeat itself. Or as an anonymous prophet posted on social media recently, “Those who forbid the teaching of history intend to repeat it.” 

Today we are celebrating our congregation’s Children’s Diversity and Justice Library which contains many books now banned from public schools and libraries in our country. I’ll be honest with you, when we started this library we did not know so many of our books would be banned. We did not see that coming. Our motivations were not reactionary. We were being proactive and positive about creating a resource that would give us all the opportunity to learn more about the unity and diversity of the human family. We wanted to create a place where stories could be told from a variety of different perspectives – Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples, African and African American, Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latinix, the LGBTQIA community, people of differing abilities, women and girls and more. 

We learn things from reading these books. There are those who say being inclusive is too difficult and to them we say “They, She, He, Easy as ABC” Some say we can only bring one person to the Mother’s Day party but we say to them we can bring the whole family. There are those who want us to forget our history but we say to them, “We lean on each other as we march to justice, to freedom, to our dreams.” So let’s thank Catherine Farmer Loya and Miram Davis for all the hard work they’ve done creating this library for the benefit not only of our congregation but of the larger Knoxville and East Tennessee community. CDJL is open to anyone from our community who would like to learn more about the human family. 

So why do we celebrate Banned Book Week in the Unitarian Universalist Church? Well let me end this homily by telling you a story that illustrates our tradition’s fondness for controversial literature. The story is about Hoseau Ballou who lived in the 19th century. He was an early leader in the Universalist Church of America which was an alternative to the hellfire and brimstone religion so common in that era.The motto of the Universalist church for many years was, “Give the people not hell, but hope and courage” and the denomination produced many books and pamphlets to support these views. 

Hosea Ballou became a Universalist minister even though he  was raised in a much more conservative household. The story goes that one day when he was a young man still living at home he was reading a book minding his own business. His father approached him and asked gruffly, “What book are you reading?” Hosea replied, “I am reading a Universalist book.” His father lost his temper and scolded his son, “Get that book out of here. I will not have a Universalist book in my house!” So young Hosea walked outside and within sight of his father placed the contraband book underneath a log in the logpile. Later that night when Hosea Ballou was asleep his father could not contain his curiosity. He hurriedly walked out to the logpile and picked up the log only to discover that the forbidden book was the Bible. 

It is my hope that here at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church we will always continue Hosea Ballou’s tradition of reading forbidden books. 

Happy Banned Book Week everybody!