A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew walk into a library…

partial image of a prisoner behind bars, reading a book
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Suppose Tom Cruise were to be busted for a federal offense and packed off to prison. Now suppose that during his incarceration, Tom decided that he’d like to delve more deeply into Scientology, his avowed religion, and the life of its founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Sorry, Tom. You’re out of luck.

Under a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) new Standardized Chapel Library Project (SCLP), only “about 150 items for each of 20 religions or religious categories” may now be shelved in any federal detention facility, according to the New York TimesIs Scientology one of the named religions? Nope.

Here are the approved religions, as listed by Justice Fellowship.

  • Baha’i
  • Buddhist
  • Catholic
  • Hindu
  • Islam
  • Jehovah’s Witness
  • Judaism
  • Messianic
  • Mormon
  • Native American
  • Orthodox
  • Pagan
  • Protestant
  • Rastafarian
  • Sikh
  • Yoruba
  • Miscellaneous Religions

Might Scientology fall under the last entry? How about Zoroastrianism, or Shintoism, or Atheism, or Ethical Culture? Who knows? The bureau won’t say, nor will it release its list of book choices publicly. But it has sent the list to the administrators of its penal institutions. The Times quotes a Muslim inmate at the minimum security Federal Prison Camp in Otisville, New York: “[He] said his chaplain showed up in the chapel library with garbage bags one day last spring and removed ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of volumes. The only thing left on the sole shelf devoted to Islam was a Koran and a few volumes of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Do other religions fare better? Not Judaism, certainly. Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post, says the Otisville Prison saw three-quarters of its Jewish books disappear, “ranging from the Zohar [interpretations of the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy] to the works of 12th-century Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Apparently, the BOP considers it too risky to allow inmates to read Maimonides’ maxim, “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death,” or his warning against judges who may convict supposed wrongdoers according to “caprice.” Dangerous stuff, that.

Gerson explains that “[f]ew would dispute that prison security and the prevention of terrorism are compelling state interests … in the spring of 2004, the inspector general of the Justice Department issued a report warning of radical Islamist influence in American prisons.” Trashing long-established library collections is not the answer, however; it’s going after gnats with a shotgun. Gerson quotes David Fathi of the American Civil Liberties Union: “The traditional remedy has been to remove specific books that incite violence. This policy [SCLP] turns that on its head. Anything not on their short, restrictive is prohibited.”

A class action lawsuit against the bureau has been filed by three Otisville inmates, a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian; it has had an immediate and curious effect: reactions of outrage from both the religious and political left and the right. Take a look:

  • Republican Study Committee, a caucus of very conservative Republicans: “We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens.”
  • Sojourners, a progressive evangelical Christian group: “Imagine walking into your local library, only to discover that the religion section has been decimated—purged of books even by such prominent theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth… That’s exactly what’s happening right now to inmates in federal prisons.”
  • Aleph Institute, a Jewish group: “No religious library book that is otherwise acceptable should be removed from the prison library stacks because it surpasses an artificial numerical limitation.”
  • Atheist Diaries, a blog about the separation of church and state: “It is taking books from prisoners on the slim chance they will help prisons become a recruiting ground for terrorist groups; how long till books are banned from the general public for the same reasons?”
  • Prison Fellowship, a Christian prisoner and family ministry: “The BOP claims that this policy is the result of Congressional concern about the growth of radical Islam in prisons. [We believe] that this policy is not what Congress intended.”
  • American Academy of Religion, the world’s largest association of academics who research or teach topics related to religion: “Many AAR members find the Standardized Chapel Library Project highly problematic.”

So who’s making these decisions; who are the arbiters of religious propriety for the 199,485 prisoners [editor’s note: in 2023, this figure is now 158,138] currently incarcerated by the Bureau of Prisons? Well … it’s kind of hard to find out.

Traci Billingsley, a BOP spokesperson, told Laurie Goodstein of the Times, that the bureau “relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles … The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates.” Goodstein added that “the identities of the bureau’s experts have not been made public,” but she was told by the BOP that they include chaplains and scholars in seminaries and at the American Academy of Religion. Academy staff members said their organization had met with prison chaplains in the past but was not consulted on this effort, though it is possible that scholars who are academy members were involved. The AAR denied all of these assertions.

The Post’s Gerson sums it up best: “In today’s American prisons—often places ruled by despair—religion is one of the few sources of hope, offering the assurance of a love stronger than past offenses, the possibility of freedom from hatred and compulsion even within prison walls, the prospect of a fresh start that begins only in the soul.

This influence should be praised and accommodated instead of singled out for unreasonable burdens—especially by an administration publicly committed to promoting faith-based answers to social problems.” If I were Tom Cruise, I’d walk the straight and narrow. Or buy my own copy of Dianetics.