Utah primary schools ban Bible for ‘vulgarity and violence’

7th June 2023

A school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing “vulgarity and violence”.

The move follows a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible has material unsuitable for children.

Utah’s Republican government passed a law in 2022 banning “pornographic or indecent” books from schools.

Most of the books that have been banned so far pertain to topics such as transgenderism.

The Utah decision was made this week by the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City after a complaint filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible they had on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.

The committee did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence”.

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. Usually children are given special children’s Bibles.