religious books removed from prison shelves

Today's NYTimes tells me that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is removing "religious" books from its shelves. The stated purpose is to make it harder for militant Muslim and other groups to recruit there.

Wow, a single directive demonstrating both smaller government in action, and the religious tolerance that my grade school teachers claimed was the hallmark of the United States (aka the greatest country in the world).

And, instead of a list of prohibited materials, prisons are to limit their religious sections to titles from a list of approved works. Thus, the Federal Prison Camp in Otisville, NY, which had "a very extensive library of Jewish religious books, many of them donated," has removed 75% of those works. Because, as we know, a key recruitment tool of militant Islamic fundamentalists is a library of Jewish religious titles.

The fun thing about this is that, while the public is not entitled to see the list of approved books, religious folk who have gotten a peek at it are bemused by the omissions and inclusions.

Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality.”

“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame (who edited “The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” which did make the list), said the Catholic list had some glaring omissions, few spiritual classics and many authors he had never heard of.

“I would be completely sympathetic with Catholic chaplains in federal prisons if they’re complaining that this list is inhibiting,” he said, “because I know they have useful books that are not on this list.”

While I suppose it's counterproductive to have a library full of inflammatory religious literature in a place where violence is all too common, limiting religion to a skewed list of 150 titles seems excessive.