Utah school district bans KJV Bible in lower schools for “vulgarity and violence”

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Amid an ongoing conservative movement to ban books considered inappropriate for minors in school libraries, the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City in Utah has banned the King James Version of the Bible for elementary and middle schools on the grounds it contains verses that are too violent and sexually explicit for younger children, the Associated Press reports. The complete Bible will still be available in high school libraries across the 72,000-student district.

The decision to remove the KJV from lower school libraries came on Friday after a parent filed a complaint in March. In the complaint seen by NBC News, the parent says the removal of the Bible was being requested in protest at a 2022 conservative Utah law that makes it easier to remove books considered pornographic or indecent from school libraries.

“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent, whose name was redacted, wrote in the complaint. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”

On Friday, a three-person committee appointed by the county school district determined that the Bible should be removed. Still, it did not give details as to which passages of Scripture were deemed inappropriate for children. Reviews of book challenges are carried out by teachers, parents, and administrators in the largely conservative state.

That committee decided to “retain the book in school library circulation only at the high school level based on age appropriateness due to vulgarity or violence,” Christopher Williams, a spokesman for the district, said in a statement to NBC.

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