Is the Bible in or out? Definitely IN, as the Bible will be returned to school shelves in a northern Utah school district after these were banned from middle and elementary schools last month.

“Based on their assessment of community standards, the appeal committee determined that The Bible has significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains,” officials from the Davis School District wrote in their published decision.

The Bible Debate in Utah

The committee’s change of heart is the most recent development in the discussion around a Utah legislation that permits parents to object to “sensitive materials” that are made available to kids in public schools. In 2022, parents’ rights advocates successfully fought for the legislation amid a wave of new regulations that targeted the books and other resources available in libraries and schools, notably those that dealt with race, gender, and sexuality.

The decision of the committee to take the Bible out infuriated proponents of more local control and parental book-challenge rights. Ken. Ivory, a Republican, was the lawmaker who sponsored the state’s “sensitive materials” law, and who initially opposed the Bible’s removal and called the challenge “a mockery.”

He believed the text was best read at home. However, in the end, he pushed for its return to schools and criticized the procedure that removed it from Davis County schools.

Bible

Ivory stressed during an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month that lawmakers should change the law to require that decisions regarding the removal of books be made by elected officials at meetings open to the public, as opposed to the kind of committee that decided to do so in the Davis School District’s middle and elementary schools.

“The magnitude of the value of the Bible as a literary work outweighs any violence or profanity which may be contained in the book,” Davis School District Board Vice President Brigit Gerrard said.

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