High schooler detained while handing out free Bibles at a protest
17-year-old Josh Alexander speaks out after he was suspended from his Canadian Catholic school and later detained for handing out free Bibles at a protest.
In the Bible, Jesus says "Let the children come to me" — but parents and teachers in Utah have decided it'll have to wait until high school.
At Davis School District, located north of Salt Lake City, the collection of Christian scripture has been shelved for students until they enter high school.
The district has removed the Bible from their elementary and middle school libraries after receiving a petition to ban the holy book due to its descriptions of sex and violence.
UTAH SCHOOL DISTRICT CONSIDERS BIBLE BAN UNDER NEW 'SENSITIVE MATERIALS' LAW
A KJV Bible with palm cross, and palm leaf against a burlap background. (iStock)
The Bible ban is not the first of its kind — Utah schools previously began removing other books from libraries after a 2022 state law required schools to consider parents' input on age-appropriate books.
The Book of Mormon — a sacred text of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — is the next holy book up for evaluation at the district.
On Dec. 11, the David School District received the petition from a parent to have the Bible removed from schools for being what the parent considered a "sex-ridden" book.
The petition of the parent requesting review of the Bible was made available in March 2022 with the parent’s name and address withheld.
In the petition, the anonymous parent seems to mock Utah Parents United, a conservative parents coalition that sought to remove inappropriately sexual books from school libraries.
Within the first five months of the law being in place, parents filed over 250 complaints petitioning for certain books to be removed from schools.
"Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition," the petition read.
The Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement. (Pascal Deloche/Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
This complaint followed the passing of Utah’s "Sensitive Materials in Schools" law enacted in May which "prohibits certain sensitive instructional materials" if they contain "explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling."
"Get this PORN out of our schools," the parent wrote along with an eight-page listing of "offensive" Bible passages. "If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk."
The school district itself did not explain its reasoning for banning the Bible, nor did it cite which verses were the deciding factor in its removal.
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Davis School District boasts over 72,000 students across all grade levels.
Fox News Digital's Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
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