The King James Bible will return to shelves in a northern Utah district that sparked a public outcry last month after banning the sacred text from middle and elementary schools after a single complaint from a parent alleging “violence and profanity” were contained in its pages.
AP reports officials from the Davis School District, which educates 72,000 students north of Salt Lake City, informed a board meeting Tuesday the district had determined the King James Bible was age-appropriate for all district libraries.
The backflip means the board sided with 70 people who filed appeals after the Bible was banned earlier this month, as Breitbart News reported.
The committee wrote in a decision published along with school board materials:
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.
The committee did not elaborate on its original reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence.”
At Davis School District’s board meeting on Tuesday, school board members chided lawmakers for blaming the majority parent committee, which it said was convened and had made its initial decision — and weighed appeals — in line with the law.
“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.
Kristin Richey holds a sign during a rally Wednesday, June 7, 2023, at the Utah State Capitol, in Salt Lake City. Bible-toting parents and Republican lawmakers convened to protest a suburban school district that announced it had removed the Bible from some schools last week. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
The original request for the Bible’s review ahead of permanent removal argued it included 49 pages of scripture that could be deemed inappropriate under the law, including instances of murder, sex, and incest.
As of March, the law that sparked the review was used 81 times with Davis County having removed 33 books for material found to contain sex, vulgarity, and violence.