Note: My plan was always to write something of reasonable length about Banned Books Week, but the fates misbehaved and I’m down with a second bout of covid, so you’re going to get the whole sermon I squeaked out on Sunday via Zoom to the Cedarhurst Unitarian Universalists, unedited.
Also, Jim Palmer mentioned me (in the same paragraph with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Sandra Lawson, and the Free Range Priest) in a long and thorough article called Confessions of an Ex-Megapastor; it’s weirdly comforting to know it’s not just us. Give him (and the others) a follow.
Also, there will be no column next week. See you on the 9th.
There was a day in 1981 when I learned something important about my mother.
She had sent me upstairs to her room to get something out of the second drawer down in her nightstand – the details are fuzzy about what it was. But what I found first when I opened the drawer was a copy of the SE Hinton novel The Outsiders.
I had heard about the book, maybe even seen it in the school library. But I was curious as to why mom had a copy hidden away in the second drawer of her nightstand. I retrieved the item, and when I handed it to her, I asked her if she was enjoying the book.
Mom then went on a rant.
She began with how the book was fine and not at all shocking and how we see worse on prime time tv, and then went into how shortsighted it was that some people thought the book was inappropriate for 16 year olds, because it’s talking about lived experiences and coming of age, and how the teacher and principal encouraged parents to read it, and you bet your bottom dollar I was gonna read that book cover to cover, and there is nothing harmful about reading.
At the time, I don’t remember having much immediate reaction, but that was such an important moment in my education and my relationship with my mother, that I can see it like it happened yesterday.
My mom, the free thinker, the righteous defender of intellectual freedom.
I cannot imagine how angry she would be to learn that this year, book bannings would be at an all time high.
I share my mother’s righteous anger. As a free thinker, as a person whose identity is sometimes the reason a book is banned, and as a Unitarian Universalist.
Unfortunately, book bannings and book burnings have a centuries-long history – based in fear and a need for control.
We know that in the early Christian church, various texts – some known, some likely unknown – were considered heretical. And that continued through the establishment of the Church in Rome, and both during and after the Reformation. We know about books meant to explore ideas being considered heretical and harmful – books describing folk practices became evidence of witchcraft. Books challenging long held dogma like the trinity were evidence of blasphemy. Books by some of our Unitarian and Universalist forbears were burned or outlawed for their heresies.
Major scientific breakthroughs – many of which challenged orthodox beliefs – were banned too. From books on astronomy to books on evolution, over and over again these books were challenged as being heretical.
Nearly every revolution experienced book banning and book burning as a way for those in power to exert control – perhaps most famously Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass in 1938 Germany where along with destroying synagogues, homes, schools, and businesses, books by Jews were destroyed.
And in the 20th century, with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, and their decision to exert political control while claiming the moral high ground, books about racism, queerfolk, and immorality were challenged.
By 1980, this so called fundamentalist high ground found its champion in Ronald Reagan, and his election was the permission they needed.
In 1981, a surge in challenges to books alarmed the American Library Association, or ALA, and Banned Books Week was launched that next year to draw national attention to the harms of censorship.
This annual event has been held every year for 42 years. Forty. Two. Years.
And… the ALA says that in 2023, there was a 65% increase in challenges – “4,240 unique book titles were targeted, many of them representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices and experiences.”
My mother would be apoplectic.
I most certainly am.
And when I interviewed here to be your minister, and I learned that the Moms of Liberty had challenged 61 books in junior and senior high school libraries here in Carroll County; as of August 14, 22 of them have been banned, with another 15 restricted – meaning parents must give permission.
Their work is ongoing.
What I realized in that moment of the interview was if you hired me as your minister, my first act would be to rise up against censorship, against hate, and against fear.
And that’s why we are doing story hours this week, reading from books that have been banned and collecting some of the books that a few people in Carroll County are afraid of their kids reading.
Books like Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, a collection of poetry that mentions sexual assault and might be the book that helps them understand their own traumatic experiences.
Books like Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen, which follows an orphan who struggles to survive during the Great Depression and finds community with a rough and tumble circus.
Fantasy books like Sarah Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury series. Books like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and Deal With It, a manual for teens girls to help them navigate their changing bodies and reproductive health in the 21st century.
At the very point when our pre-teens and teens are experiencing huge changes and developing their personal identities, this group wants to keep these kids from learning anything about that.
Out of fear.
Let’s face it – so much of this is driven by fear – and it is a fear that’s encouraged by some religious and political leaders who themselves are fearful – or who know that fear is a great weapon in the search for power.
Back in May, when I was still just a guest in your pulpit, I talked about the idea from Darwin and others about ‘survival of the friendliest’ – how cooperation and community are the reason homo sapiens survived, and continue to survive to this day. And I asked the question, “if friendliness is such a key to our being human, why are people so awful to each other?”
What I said then is worth repeating in this context: “when we form communities and cooperate within them, we begin to feel protective, and when we feel that our group is being threatened by a different group, we are able to separate them from us, which allows us to dehumanize them. Where empathy and compassion would have been, there is nothing. Those we perceive as outsiders are no longer humans – and the rhetoric of dehumanization flourishes – not just calling others animals, but using language to elicit disgust and vilification. Which then sets a norm, drawing hard lines between us and them, removing the ability to even communicate, no less come to any kind of compromises.
This is still happening. More so now, when our political landscape has driven one party to rely solely on stoking fear.
Because if you convince people that the boogeyman is lurking around every corner, you’re going to see a boogeyman everywhere you look… and you’re going to want someone to do something about it.
Banning books is a significant way of doing this. Removing a book about lgbtq relationships, like Prince and Knight, or Heather Has Two Mommies or And Tango Makes Three stigmatizes those children who do have two mommies or two daddies, as well as those who find themselves wondering about their own attractions.
Removing books like I am Jazz, Red, a Crayon Story, and I Am Me tells children that those who are trans or non-binary do not or should not exist – because to them, they don’t appear in any books they read.
Removing books like Lailah’s Lunchbox prioritizes one religion over any other and makes kids who are no Christian the other to be feared.
Removing books like Born on the Water and To Kill a Mockingbird” and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and honestly anything by Toni Morrison or Octavia Butler or Ralph Ellison prevents children from learning about racism and our nation’s long and uncomfortable history.
And removing books like In the Night Kitchen and Strega Nona prevents children from learning how to use creativity and their imaginations to solve problems and dream big.
Banning books that children and youth may read is crippling our ability to meet the moment and work for a better future. As filmmaker Ava DuVernay, Banned Books Week Honorary chair, writes, “I believe that censorship is the enemy of freedom. By banning books, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn from the past and to envision a braver future. Books have the power to open minds and build bridges. This is why certain forces do not want the masses to engage with books. They fear progress and growth in new, bold directions.”
They fear progress and growth.
Because they’ve been told that people who don’t look like them or believe like them or love like them are the enemy. Because if you convince people that the boogeyman is lurking around every corner, you’re going to see a boogeyman everywhere you look.
They have found a bit of power – imagine if they used that power to ban assault weapons.
But this particular power they found and are wielding is why the number of book challenges continue to rise. They have the kind of power that is now influencing state legislatures and is criminalizing the freedom to read – a teacher in Oklahoma had her license revoked for sharing information about a Brooklyn library that would loan long distance. Librarians and educators are under fire in Florida, Missouri, Utah, Arkansas, Indiana, and Idaho for refusing to remove books from their shelves.
But they don’t know how to stop it, and if they’re not careful, they’ll soon be banning every book – including the one book they think holds the only truth; a book that is filled with rape, murder, incest, war, destruction, injustice, cruelty.
Remember that the key to Strega Nona’s magical pasta pot was not just the ingredients that went in, but what to do when there’s enough: singing a song and blowing three kisses.
In other words, Love.
Our faith is love – it is at the center of everything we do. Because we understand that every body is sacred, every mind is a celebration, every act of justice lifts all of us, and the beloved community is not just a dream but a goal.
When we put that kind of expansive, inclusive, radical love into practice, we fight any tool that hate throws at us to keep us from building that beloved community.
Access to books matters. Access to all of our human stories matters.
And it matters to our children, not just adults. As the anti-censorship group Unite Against Book Bans asserts,
“Books are tools for understanding complex issues. Limiting young people's access to books does not protect them from life's complex and challenging issues. Young people deserve to see themselves reflected in a library's books.
“Reading is a foundational skill, critical to future learning and to exercising our democratic freedoms.
“Removing and banning books from public libraries is a slippery slope to government censorship and the erosion of our country's commitment to freedom of expression. A small group of ‘concerned people’ should not be making these kinds of decisions for other people’s children.”
Our call is to love, and to show that love by celebrating people – all people – from all walks of life, through all their identities and experiences. Books – these books that accompany us and teach us and help us know we are not alone – matter in a free society. We are – or should be a free people. And free people read freely.
So now… go read a banned book!
A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) is the series of which A Court of Mists and Roses is the second book. While I don’t believe these books should be banned from public libraries and bookstores, and I read and enjoyed them… I do think I would be a little concerned as a parent if my (theoretical) 16-year-old came home with some of the later books from their school library. ACOTAR, the first book, isn’t super explicit but the later books and the companion series really are. Like really.
Maybe that makes me old-fashioned and a stick in the mud. But I do think there’s a line someplace. These books are amazing fantasy, and they have powerful female lead characters. But the sex scenes in the later books in the series don’t serve a literary purpose. They’re not part of characters’ growth, and they’re seriously steamy and really written to titillate the reader but don’t serve any other purpose. As heterosexual sex scenes go, they’re respectful and equal. I wouldn’t even necessarily object to my own kid reading them. But I’m still not sure that very explicit sex scenes whose primary purpose is to turn the reader on belong in a school library.