Latest Victim of Bush's "War on Terror": Religious Freedom

The Bush Administration puts the "War on Terror" above all other policies and principles, including, apparently and surprisingly, freedom of religion. An administration that wants to turn other social programs over to church groups has decided that prisoners seeking to rehabilitate through religious study can't be trusted with religious books that don't meet the government's approval. According to Laurie Goldstein ("Prisons Purging Books on Faith from Libraries," New York Times, 2007.09.10), the Bureau of Prisons has created the Standardized Chapel Library Project, "lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba. The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates, Ms. [spokeswoman for BoP Traci] Billingsley said. Prayer books and other worship materials are not affected by this process." The Bureau of Prisons created these lists in response to a Justice Department recommendation that prisons take steps "to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups."

One chaplain said the lists from the federal government are unnecessary. "because chaplains routinely reject any materials that incite violence or disparage, and donated materials already had to be approved by prison officials. Prisoners can buy religious books, he added, but few have much money to spend." Instead, the government convenes a panel of experts (who the government says includes chaplains and scholars from the American Academy of Religion, which itself has no knowledge of any formal government consultation with its organization or its members) to dictate the acceptable religious tracts for all prisoners.

The list itself has some arbitrary choices. Goldstein notes that the approved list of Christian readin g includes nine works by CS Lewis -- good stuff! -- but none from other, arguably weightier theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, or Cardinal Avery Dulles. Even well-known pastor and writer Robert H. Schuller hasn't made the approved list. The Bureau of Prisons promises expansions and updates of the list, but right now, prisons are throwing books out of their libraries and not getting money to buy government-approved replacements.

So now the Bush Administration sees freedom of religion as a threat to national security. The Bush Administration apparently doesn't even trust the prison chaplains who know their prisoners, preferring instead a big-government, Big-Brother solution. The Bush Administration is throwing out presumption of innocence for all theological authors; to make the prison reading list, a panel of anonymous and thus unaccountable experts must judge an author's work acceptable.

Well, there go three more American principles I thought our soldiers were fighting for. All the more reason to fly the flag at half-staff tomorrow.