A curse on your ‘infidel’ books!

August 12, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

A ban on “infidel” books sounds like something out of a fundamentalist Muslim country. This ban, which is in place right now, comes not from Saudi Arabia but from another far-right theocratic state — Kentucky.

A 100-year-old law in the Bluegrass State mandates that “no book or other publication of a sectarian, infidel or immoral character, or that reflects on any religious denomination, shall be used or distributed in any common school.”

My guess is that this strange language reflects some inter-faith tensions that were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some states were fighting over which version of Christianity to promote in public schools. Banning “sectarian” books was usually code word for keeping the Roman Catholic version of the scriptures out of the classrooms. Many Protestants at that time insisted that the Bible could be used in schools in a general and “non-sectarian” manner.

But I’m at a loss to explain the “infidel” language. Other than Robert Ingersoll, I don’t think there were a lot of them running around back then. (Ingersoll died in 1899, so even he wasn’t running around in 1906.)

Obviously this is an antiquated statute. So no one pays attention to it, right?

Wrong. Public school officials in the state say since the measure has never been explicitly repealed, they still advise local schools to at least know about it.

“It’s still a law on the books. It’s still a law schools have to follow,” Brad Hughes, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. The paper went on to report, “That group includes the book ban in its model policy and procedures, although it no longer warns schools to avoid ‘infidel’ doctrine. Hughes said he doubts anyone is actually searching for heretical texts in Kentucky.”

I would not be so sure about that. And if they are not, I suspect they might start now. This law could be just the weapon the TV preachers and their followers need to finally vanquish Harry Potter, Holden Caulfield, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dorothy Gale, Winston Smith, the purple Teletubby and a host of other fictional characters that have labored for years to lead our children into a moral cesspool.

I really wish the Lexington newspaper had let this sleeping dog lie. Nothing good can come of letting the Religious Right know it has this weapon. They will only spend more time arguing about which version of Christianity the public schools should promote when the answer is obvious: none.

Thanks Morbo. If legislators wanted to be useful they would spend one year repealing old outdated repressive laws. It’s time for spring cleaning. Then I can finally take that lantern off my Toyota so that I don’t scare the horses.

  • There used to be some annual article about weird laws on the books in various states that would be published in late fall before state legislative sessions would begin at the new year. It served as a reference for legislators to look at these items. Perhaps bloggers ought to take up the task of finding outdated laws and bring them to media attention for removal.

  • ***”no book or other publication of a sectarian, infidel or immoral character, or that reflects on any religious denomination, shall be used or distributed in any common school.”***
    —Morbo

    Actually, this could be 1906-speak for the First Amendment

    ***”Congress shall make[(a)] no law respecting an establishment of religion, or [(b)] prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”***
    —1st Amendment, U’S. Constitution.

    The first part of the Kentucky law—being “no book oor other publication of a sectarian, infidel or immoral character”—could be viewed as an equivalent for part [(b)] of the Constitutional quote…and the other portion of the Kentucky law—“reflects on any religious denomination”—stands pretty equal to the prohibition on establishing one religion as preferrable to other religions. Given the linguistic applications at the turn of that century—we might refer to it as “Latter-Day Victorianism”—it seems to me that this might have been a bunch of “speechifying Kentuckians” simply saying: “Religion in the common schools–don’t talk for it; don’t talk against it; don’t talk about it period.”

    To su[ppor this, take the “midsection” out of the law, and read it with only the beginning and ending portions in the form of a cohesive sentence. It reads thus:

    “No book or other publication that reflects on any religious denomination shall be used or distributed in any common school.”

    That, IMHO, bans Bibles, Korans, Talmuds, Wiccan Books-of-Shadow, tenets of the Hindu, Shinto, and Chaos—along with handouts like those pernicious little Chick tracts that keep popping up all over the place—from within the public schools. Any “fundie-freak” who wants to pick this law up and run with it could very well be playing a good-old-fashioned game of “Russian Roullette….”

  • Seems to me that while the rest of the country was busy carving a home out of generally hostile environments, then creating an agriculture which was the envy of the world, then building an industrial plant on a scale previously undreamed, the old plantation Bible Belt was satisfied with Fundamentalism and “keeping the niggers down” (to quote Randy Newman). I still think we’d have been better off if Lincoln had allowed the Old South to become the snake-handling, devil-treeing rural backwash it seems hell bent on becoming anyway.

  • I really don’t think this is a problem. If Kentucky were to try to enforce this law today, it would be overturned on First Amendment grounds in a heartbeat.

  • I still contend that we would be much better off today if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t insisted on keeping the South…

  • Yes, James, it would — and that would give the Republicans yet another example of godless activist unaccountable liberal judges to rile their base up about.

  • I have not read the Harry Potter books, but I would not argue with a school district that decided not to use them in classrooms.

    We Godless folk may roll our eyes when conservative Christians pop a vein over Hallowe’en celebrations in public schools, but I think this indicates insensitivity on our part.

    We seculars are used to “celebrating” Hallowe’en as a folk-holiday, and reading Harry Potter as just another children’s book, without realizing that “witchcraft” and “magic” are aspects of religion, and are taken very seriously by some believers.

    While the idea that taping a paper witch on a broomstick to a classroom wall could be regarded as encouraging witchcraft seems funny to us, Wicca *is* a religion, and if we don’t want the fundies establishing their religion in the schools, we should pay attention to their concerns about “witchcraft” and “magic” in the schools as well.

    After all, those spells are powerful! 🙂

    P.S. Personally if I were Wiccan I would regard the public-school celebrations of my youth to be anti-, not pro-Wiccan. After all, who wants to be an ugly old witch with a face full of warts?

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