by Jane Moran
Last year, the American Library Association recorded 4,237 challenges to different books. 90% of these challenges did not come from parents, but from “activists and government officials.” Often, these challengers wanted books taken off the shelves because they included LGBT+ representation, depicted sexual violence, or discussed racism. Books by authors of color are disproportionately likely to be impacted.
As a person of faith, I believe that we sin when we attempt to limit someone’s access to knowledge. In the Letter to the Philippians, Paul directs us to “do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” What could be less humble than refusing to learn from the perspectives of others?
I know I’m not the only Christian who feels that way. However, I rarely hear these concerns discussed in church. That’s why I was so excited to learn that the United Church of Christ had published a resource for congregations interested in holding a Banned Books Blessing.
Reading that document inspired me to write my own liturgy for a worship service about banned books. I hope that it will be useful to other Christians who would like to address this issue from a faith-based perspective.
Invocation
Almighty One, we know you as the Word made flesh. Your incarnation promises that holiness is not reserved for heaven. It can also exist here, with us. There is holiness in the things of this earth, things that we can touch and see.
Books are holy. A book is a physical representation of something intangible. Through books, we gain insight into the perspectives of others. We learn to love our siblings as you call us to.
Today, we ask you to be with us as we give thanks for books and everything contained within them. Inspire us, God, so that we might continue to be people who seek knowledge, treasure it, and share it with others.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, the Author of our lives. Amen.
Potential Readings
“Books are for everyone.
Am I not important?
Am I invisible?
Books make us think.
Books make us imagine.
Books make us compassionate.
Books make us creative.
Books make us love.”
-Aya Kahlil, The Great Banned-Books Book Sale (2023)
“Community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly…Readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.
I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility.”
-Marilynne Robinson, “Identity and Community,” in When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012)
“Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.”
-Proverbs 31:8
Responsive Blessing of the Books
(If your congregation has a “Blessing of the Backpacks” tradition, you can use that as a jumping-off point. Encourage children (or adults!) to bring a favorite book to the front of the church to be blessed.)
Leader: Books are more than ink and paper.
People: Books connect us to other people.
Leader: Through books, many blessings have come into our lives.
People: God calls us to be generous with our blessings.
Leader: If we are to be free, we must be free to read.
People: We must be free to learn, to grow, and to change.
Leader: Remember: it was for freedom that Christ set you free.
People: Let us not take that freedom for granted. Let us celebrate, read, and share these books.
Leader: Amen.
The Rev. Jane Moran is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Originally from Connecticut, Jane now lives and works in Kentucky.
