Beyond Rivalry

Saw this article, "Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries," in the NYT yesterday and notebooked it to write about later, but Nancy Hitt at Preaching Peace beat me to it and speaks for me as well. Here's a lengthy excerpt from her response:

"If you were wondering how the war of all against all was coming along, I'd say it was on its way. We have reached a new level of desperation when we start purging religious texts from our prisons in order to keep the nation safe. Not that such texts aren't useful for inciting violence; of course they are! After all, religion, like the law that keeps the offenders behind bars, is meant to contain and control human violence. The texts that are used in service of that goal are powerful, used as easily to meet the goal of containing violence as to inciting it. I'm guessing few of these officials have read the Bible, because there was no mention of removing it from the shelves in the NY Times article reporting on this. If they had, it would have to go too; there are way too many ways to encourage violence by manipulating what's within its pages. However, in time honored human tradition, violence is being used to contain violence. ...

"Of course the characteristic American response to all of this is to file a lawsuit. So far, two of them have been filed focusing on First Amendment concerns. So now we have two of the three pillars of culture at war with each other over violence. Is there no way to stop the madness?

"In my frustration, I've been muttering things like: Mimetic Theory should be mandatory! Then I laugh at myself as I realize I've just replicated the same response that I'm scandalized by, that old idea of using law to enforce understanding and contain human violence. ...

 

"I'm pretty sure that censoring the religious texts available to prisoners will neither reduce violence (it's more likely to increase it) nor protect the nation from further terrorist activity. But I have to admit that those prison officials are on to something. They are right to recognize that religious texts can be used/misused to manipulate violence."