Summary
Rightwing groups across the US are driving a wave of legislation to restrict books in school and public libraries, targeting content deemed “sexually explicit” or “obscene,” often affecting LGBTQ+ and race-related titles.
Texas leads with 31 bills and 538 book bans in the 2023–24 school year.
Proposed laws, like Texas Senate Bill 13, shift book selection power from librarians to parent-led advisory boards.
Critics, including librarians and legal scholars, warn these efforts amount to censorship, risk violating First Amendment rights, and reduce access in underserved communities.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, but that’s how it happened in the Western world.
Would it later on happen “naturally” without it? Maybe; hard to say, we can only speculate since it’s not how it went.
But even from a “Christian” perspective, I would agree, yes it would; these values align with God’s will and He would have put these ideas in peoples’ heads even if the Bible didn’t exist.
Geez, so much for getting free will, eh?
There were scores of Christians who thought slavery was great. If the bible was really the ticket into being against it then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Instead we get The Americas™, a collection of stolen lands turned into a mire of plantations and now into prisons built on making said the prisoners work for pennies to prop up the rest of the country while many more “free” people are below the poverty line despite putting in their 40+ hours of hard, often physical, labour. Even people that are “paid decently” aren’t getting their fair share. Slavery coexists with the bible just fine, and in fact thrives more in more religious regions.
And let’s be very clear, the bible was explicitly used by slaveowners to justify chattel slavery in the US. Slave bibles that had any mention of concepts like freedom removed, were distributed to slaves in order to keep them in line.
So not only does the bible explicitly condone slavery, it was itself used to great success, as a justification for chattel slavery in the US.
My only conclusion can be that an all-powerful, all-knowing god was aware of this and allowed it to happen. At the very least. And perhaps even wanted it to happen.
All it would have taken was to change one of the several “don’t worship anyone but me, guys” commandments to “don’t own other humans as property.” Problem solved.
The bible is full of “revolutionary ideas” (in the addled minds of Christians who have never read an actual book in their lives), yet “don’t own people” was just a step too far I guess.
That doesn’t hurt free will? Someone receiving a “revelation” is still free to act in it as they will; Christian theology also recognizes Natural/General Revelation in which anyone can find God’s will just by observing the natural world and/or society. Apostle Paul called the Greek philosophers “prophets”, and I personally think the title also applies to modern scientists.
(cont. Mastodon char limit)
I don’t and can’t disagree with what you said. The moment the powerful started using the Bible its message was twisted into supporting all sorts of evil, like those you mentioned.
But I believe the message of Jesus is that it is meant to be read from the perspective of protecting, helping, and freeing the weak, the “lesser”, the vulnerable.
And it was others reading it this way that made the ideas that became human rights to spread in the Western World.