Banned books ??

crotalus667 · 22-03-2008 11:08pm #1

I wonder if anyone here could help me?? To cut a long story short im looking for a list of books banned / recommended not to be read by Christians , first off no im not a Christian , but I started looking for a list of books banned by the catholic church as an academic exercise and ive drawn a blank the closest I could find was an original list of the first Index Librorum Prohibitorum , so I decided to check and try to find a list of books banned by some of the big us ministry’s but alas I cant find any ,

Ps
Im not looking to start an argument over what should be banned or no , im just looking to find what and why certain books are considered offensive to religious groups,

Pps
It’s an interesting fact that The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was not a list compiled by popes there was an actual consul that debated weather or not a book went on the list or not , and if it made the list the author could appeal, or resubmit an edited version ,

PDN · 22-03-2008 11:14pm

crotalus667 wrote: »

so I decided to check and try to find a list of books banned by some of the big us ministry’s but alas I cant find any

I wouldn't expect many, or even any, of the big US ministries to issue a list of banned books. You might occasionally get a preacher mentioning why a particular book should be avoided - but I don't think many of them go in for the whole book banning thing.

As a Pentecostal minister I would advise people to steer clear of porn etc - but I I've never banned a book in my life. We don't pretend to exercise that kind of control over our church members' lives - and I hope to God we never do.

crotalus667 · 22-03-2008 11:36pm

PDN wrote: »

I wouldn't expect many, or even any, of the big US ministries to issue a list of banned books. You might occasionally get a preacher mentioning why a particular book should be avoided - but I don't think many of them go in for the whole book banning thing.
.

I have to say that most of the ministry sites I came across tended to be of the opinion that you should steer your children and teach them how to interpret what they read rather than go out and burn books in the streets , I’ve a funny feeling the mainstream media has shown a distorted view of the us ministries :rolleyes:(surprise surprise) The last time I recall seeing a us ministry on the news was when they where burning Harry Potter (the book not the actor that play's him:D) and the time before that they where burning Pullman I wonder was it the same hand full of people at each burning :rolleyes:

PDN · 22-03-2008 11:52pm

crotalus667 wrote: »

I have to say that most of the ministry sites I came across tended to be of the opinion that you should steer your children and teach them how to interpret what they read rather than go out and burn books in the streets , I’ve a funny feeling the mainstream media has shown a distorted view of the us ministries :rolleyes:(surprise surprise) The last time I recall seeing a us ministry on the news was when they where burning Harry Potter (the book not the actor that play's him:D) and the time before that they where burning Pullman I wonder was it the same hand full of people at each burning :rolleyes:

I'm sure you'll always get a bunch of people somewhere who want to object to something. Fred Phelps and his little group of nutjobs probably enjoy a bit of book burning when they aren't picketting military funerals or making asses of themselves on TV documentaries. However, such TV clips are certainly not representative of US Christianity as a whole. For example, Christianity Today magazine (founded by Billy Graham and widely influential among evangelicals) published an editorial called "Why we like Harry Potter' and articles both pro and anti the little boy wizard http://ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/january10/29.37.html

Certainly most Christians would want to control to some extent what their children read or watch. For example, I would not recommend that a 6 year old watch the opening scenes of carnage in Saving Private Ryan - but I would positively encourage a 16 year old to watch the entire movie. I wouldn't see such parental control is equating to banning books.

There may be some ministries that do ban books - but I've never heard of any influential ones doing so. On an individual level, you will get such stuff. I heard of a small church in my town (in Ireland) that advised all their members not to read the Davinci Code. On the other hand, we advised our members to read it and use it as an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus. I think evangelical or Protestant Christianity is generally too diverse to try to operate such censorship across the board.

Black Swan · 22-03-2008 11:57pm

Banned books for what Christian denomination?

robindch · 23-03-2008 1:31am

As above, it depends on the denomination that you're talking about. In general, most religions attempt to restrict access to media which discuss sex openly and more specifically, media which take a benign view of male homosexuality or abortion. Most religions will also try to restrict access to books which do not paint the history or the culture or the growth of the same religion in glowing terms.

Here in Ireland until around 30 years or so ago, the state banned whatever the Church requested it to ban. This included, for example, Edward Gibbon's historical steamroller Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (for the accurate and grim picture it painted of early christianity), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (lots of sex).

Many modern religious-controlled states ban stuff on the internet -- hence, if you're in Saudi Arabia, you can't access http://www.religioustolerance.org, and if you're in Iran, http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com is off limits, both for pretty obvious reasons.

Though, sometimes, things get past the mullahs, so when in Malaysia last October, I saw that Dawkins' God Delusion was getting pretty good billing. Don't think it did much to halt Malaysia's slide into fundamentalism though.

crotalus667 · 23-03-2008 10:00am

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Banned books for what Christian denomination?

Originally I was looking for the catholic church’s list referred to as the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” it was started in 1543 and was regularly updated until 1943 at which point it had over 4000 titles on it , a lot of it was not what you would call anti church but more just stuff that the church did not agree with (or found of questionable moral value) , in particular the early stuff , I believe one book was banned for suggesting that the moon orbits the earth, later it was mainly plays novels , funnily enough Darwin never made the list , nor did Karl Marx , or Hitler although Hitler’s Mein Kamph apparently caused a large rift among the counsel that resulted in years of debate

crotalus667 · 23-03-2008 10:04am

PDN wrote: »

Certainly most Christians would want to control to some extent what their children read or watch. For example, I would not recommend that a 6 year old watch the opening scenes of carnage in Saving Private Ryan - but I would positively encourage a 16 year old to watch the entire movie..

Christian or not I think that is just good parenting

crotalus667 · 23-03-2008 10:09am

robindch wrote: »

Here in Ireland until around 30 years or so ago, the state banned whatever the Church requested it to ban.

Do you know that there is actually no way of getting things off that banned list the legislation to remove it is just not there , :rolleyes:

robindch · 23-03-2008 11:57am

crotalus667 wrote: »

Do you know that there is actually no way of getting things off that banned list the legislation to remove it is just not there , :rolleyes:

Not sure about that.

Last time I checked three years ago, the Government Publications Office on Molesworth Street was still selling a tiny list of banned publications. It wasn't more then five or ten pages long, sparsely printed on A6 paper and most of the stuff on it were hardcore pron magazines. No sign of Gibbon at all. Somebody must have taken a legally-approved scissors to at some point it between ~1975 and 2005!

crotalus667 · 23-03-2008 2:53pm

robindch wrote: »

Not sure about that.
!

I am sure ,I base my statment on an interview with the censor on tv3 ,

robindch · 23-03-2008 3:07pm

crotalus667 wrote: »

I am sure ,I base my statment on an interview with the censor on tv3 ,

The Irish Statute Book disagrees:

Deleting stuff from the register of prohibited videos is described in Section 15, subsection (2) of the Video Recordings Act, 1989 (full text here). While removing stuff from the register of prohibited books is described in Section 16, subsection (3) of the Censorship of Publications Act, 1946 (full text here).

crotalus667 · 23-03-2008 3:15pm

robindch wrote: »

The Irish Statute Book disagrees:

Deleting stuff from the register of prohibited videos is described in Section 15, subsection (2) of the Video Recordings Act, 1989 (full text here). While removing stuff from the register of prohibited books is described in Section 16, subsection (3) of the Censorship of Publications Act, 1946 (full text here).

I stand corrected although I am 99% sure that I recalled the interview correctly

wolfsbane · 23-03-2008 6:07pm

PDN says it very well.

Just a small point: even where churches organise the burning of a particular book (e.g., Harry Potter), that should be construed as a publicity stunt to warn people of the perceived danger of the book - rather than a ban on their members reading it. Only a really cultic church would think it could get away with banning their members from reading anything.

Soul Winner · 26-03-2008 12:49pm

From the Index Librorum Prohibitorum on Wikipedia.

Some notable writers with works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum:

Joseph Addison
Francis Bacon
Honoré de Balzac
Simone de Beauvoir
Cesare Beccaria
Jeremy Bentham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Thomas Browne
Giordano Bruno
John Calvin
Giacomo Casanova
Auguste Comte
Nicolaus Copernicus
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Erasmus Darwin
Daniel Defoe
René Descartes
Denis Diderot
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Desiderius Erasmus
Johannes Scotus Eriugena
Gustave Flaubert
Anatole France
Frederick II of Prussia
Galileo Galilei
Edward Gibbon
André Gide
Vincenzo Gioberti
Graham Greene
Heinrich Heine
Thomas Hobbes
Victor Hugo
David Hume
Cornelius Jansen
Immanuel Kant
Adam F. Kollár[5]
Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska
Nikos Kazantzakis
Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Pierre Larousse
Gregorio Leti
John Locke
Martin Luther
Niccolò Machiavelli
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maimonides
Nicolas Malebranche
Jules Michelet
John Stuart Mill[6]
John Milton
Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Patrick O'Brian
Blaise Pascal
François Rabelais
Ernest Renan
Samuel Richardson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
George Sand
Jean-Paul Sartre
Baruch de Spinoza
Laurence Sterne
Emanuel Swedenborg
Jonathan Swift
Maria Valtorta
Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde
Voltaire
Gerard Walschap
Émile Zola
Huldrych

crotalus667 · 26-03-2008 11:00pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

From the Index Librorum Prohibitorum on Wikipedia.

I have seen that list before to cut a long story short there schould be about 4,000 books on the list :eek: (that was in 1930 something before they renamed it)

raah! · 05-04-2008 11:24am

That's a shocking list! you say this is one put forward by the church?!!! Some of the most prominent christian and theist philosophers are on this

George Berkley (irish too!) was a bishop
Immanuel Kant one of the most famous christian philosophers in existence, then there seems to be loads of existentialists, and poor old Voltaire.And Martin Luther!

well It seems i have made too many exclamations here and that i should look this up first

This list is ridiculous. It's mostly just philosophers, and reading the books of many of them would only strengthen one's faith. But as far as I'm concerned this list is one of the more shameful aspects of the history of the catholic church. I hope it doesn't still exist.

crotalus667 · 05-04-2008 4:54pm

raah! wrote: »

I hope it doesn't still exist.

it does but it does not get updated now (afaik)

Banned books ??

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