(RNS) — It’s a weekend morning in america and the library doorways are open. A younger household searches for brand spanking new image books for bedtime. An older couple arrives for his or her tax assist appointment. An adolescent slips in to make use of the Wi-Fi earlier than work. Only a few blocks away, a home of worship fills with voices in prayer, volunteers collect to feed the hungry or elders tutor neighborhood youngsters.
Totally different buildings, but each carry an analogous spirit of welcome, fellowship and repair.
Libraries and homes of worship are trusted institutions in our communities. Each are locations individuals flip to for consolation, information and connection. Every supplies a singular strategy to nurturing the spirit and tending to the every day flourishing of minds and lives, telling tales that talk to the deepest a part of the human expertise.
RELATED: My e-book was simply banned from the US Naval Academy library
Sadly, libraries are generally portrayed as at odds with individuals of religion. This usually stems from a lack of knowledge or understanding of the insurance policies and the mission of libraries. So many individuals of religion in our nation use and profit from libraries, treasuring them as shared communal areas the place numerous perception methods, traditions and identities can flourish and work together. They’re locations the place everybody’s sacred books are welcome and the place all books and views are handled as equally sacred.
This week is “Banned Books Week” throughout the nation, after we elevate consciousness concerning the risks of censorship and have fun the liberty to learn. We, the authors, are a librarian who’s an individual of deep religion, and a non secular chief whose household loves our native library. It pains us to acknowledge the risk that our libraries presently face. There’s a small minority who wield their religion as a justification to focus on libraries for censorship, insisting they’ve the proper to inform the remainder of us what morality appears to be like like or which tales matter. That is unhealthy for libraries, unhealthy for democracy and unhealthy for religion.
The work of defending libraries, confronting e-book bans and defeating censorship is aligned with so many religion communities’ dedication to fact, compassion and justice. The safety of libraries and the tales they maintain ought to be understood as a wider dedication of our communities to non secular freedom. All too usually, tales about Jews, Muslims or different spiritual minorities are focused by censorship efforts aimed toward erasing the variety on the coronary heart of our democracy.
(Photograph by Tom Hermans/Unsplash/Inventive Commons)
That’s the reason individuals of religion belong firmly and proudly on the entrance strains of advocating for native libraries — and contesting efforts to undermine or censor them. Non secular communities devoted to a thriving multifaith democracy can and will uplift libraries and what they characterize — a perception in everybody’s shared dignity and proper to be taught.
Public libraries in America could possibly be described as secular sanctuaries. They’ve in frequent not solely structure constructed for gentle, reflection and gathering, however their enduring spirit of welcome and surprise. From their beginnings, library leaders noticed librarianship as a civic calling, a ministry of service that strengthens communities by making certain entry to information, alternative and tradition.
That calling is enshrined within the Library Invoice of Rights, which affirms that each individual deserves entry to data, no matter perception, class or background. In any given week, library assembly rooms could host a Buddhist meditation circle, a lecture on transhumanism, a tenants’ rights organizing session, a youth poetry slam and an novice astronomy membership with out judgment, exclusion or restriction. These sources weave collectively the material of group life. That cloth frays when each sacred texts and books questioning religion are silenced.
To stave off the specter of censorship, we encourage native librarians and supporters of the library to achieve out to close by religion communities, take heed to their concepts and construct new coalitions devoted to serving all locally. For entry to information to stay actual and significant, library insurance policies and procedures have to be carried out by means of good-faith collaboration with one another. Libraries want each voice — spiritual and secular, creative and scientific, younger and outdated — to sing in refrain for the liberty to learn.
Non secular leaders and followers can and should present up alongside library employees to defend the liberty to learn, the liberty to assume, the liberty to develop and the liberty of religion. Each voice that joins this choir strengthens the promise that libraries stay open, welcoming and empowering to everybody.
(The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. Sam Helmick is the 2025-2026 president of the American Library Affiliation. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)
