NEW YORK TIMES
Manny Fernandez | October 21, 2012

In a barrage of recent e-mails, telephone calls and letters to his office, Kevin Weldon has been called some of the worst things a Christian man in this predominantly Christian town can be called: un-Christian, and even anti-Christian.

“I’ve been in this business a long, long time,” said Mr. Weldon, the superintendent of the 1,300-student school district in Kountze, northeast of Houston. “People that know me know how I am. Even though I got those things, I’m going to be honest with you, this may sound very flippant, but it just went in one ear and out the other.”

Mr. Weldon, 53, is in a position that few superintendents in small-town Texas have found themselves: taking a stand on religious expression that has put him at odds with the majority of his students and his neighbors, not to mention the governor, the attorney general and, some in Kountze believe, his God.

After consulting with lawyers, Mr. Weldon banned the district’s cheerleaders from putting Bible verses on the banners they hoist at the beginning of football games, out of concern that the signs were unlawful and amounted to school-sanctioned religious expression.

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WASHINGTON POST
Ron Charles | June 6, 2012

From papyrus to vellum to paper to e-books, two principles of publishing have not changed over the centuries:

1. Churches can’t resist the temptation to condemn books.

2. Nothing boosts book sales like condemnation by a church.

Who, after all, would have read Sister Margaret Farley’s “Just Love” if the Vatican hadn’t censured it this week? The Catholic Church delivered the nun’s treatise on Christian sexual ethics from the wilderness of obscurity into the promised land of fame. For any book publicist, such denunciation is an answer to a prayer. On Amazon’s Web site, “Just Love” immediately ascended from No. 142,982 to No. 16.

What did the Holy See expect? The Book of Acts describes Christians’ first book-burning celebration as a big success, but in the modern age, highly publicized reproof seems to spark a tremendous rise in sales.

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MOSCOW TIMES
Alexander Bratersky | November 29, 2011

The book may be accused of expressing religious hatred, suppressing human dignity and declaring one religion superior to all others. But “Bhagavad Gita as It Is” can hardly be called Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Still — if prosecutors in Tomsk have their way — the two may soon end up together on the Justice Ministry’s list of banned extremist literature.

Why the Hindu text central to the Hare Krishna faith has suddenly been targeted is unclear, but some suspect it is really an attack on the religious freedom of a group not well-regarded by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The case against the widely distributed book began in September when Tomsk prosecutors filed charges in the city’s Leninsky District Court saying the text attacks practitioners of other religions as “fools,” “demons” and “pigs.”

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WASHINGTON POST (The Answer Sheet)
Valerie Strauss | August 16, 2011

Here’s a relatively new one in the annals of book challenges: A Virginia school district has removed from the required sixth grade reading list at one middle school a Sherlock Holmes book because a Mormon parent complained about the way it portrayed Mormons.

Josh Davis, chief operating officer for the Albemarle County Public Schools said the school board decided a few days ago to honor the request of a group of parents, “one in particular of the Mormon faith,” who complained earlier in the year.

The book in question is “ A Study in Scarlet ,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a classic novel that was the first to present the character of the brilliant sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his friend, Dr. Watson. Doyle wrote the novel in three weeks; it was published in 1886.

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Related article:
What would Sherlock Holmes say about book ban?