{"id":162,"date":"2007-09-10T15:55:42","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T15:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious.php"},"modified":"2007-09-10T15:55:42","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T15:55:42","slug":"prisons-tossing-out-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious","title":{"rendered":"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>United Press International<\/strong><br \/>\nWashington &#8211; Prisons in the United States are following a government directive to purge their libraries of religious books, causing outrage among many inmates.<br \/>\nThe action, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, was prompted by a 2004 report listing things prisons should do to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups, The New York Times reported Monday.<br \/>\nMark Earley, president of the Christian group Prison Fellowship, said removing all religious books from the libraries amounts to overkill.<br \/>\n&#8220;It&#8217;s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,&#8221; Earley told the Times. &#8220;There&#8217;s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.&#8221;<br \/>\nLast month two inmates at a federal prison camp in upstate New York filed a class-action lawsuit charging the Bureau of Prisons with violating their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment.<br \/>\nCopyright 2007 by United Press International<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United Press International Washington &#8211; Prisons in the United States are following a government directive to purge their libraries of religious books, causing outrage among many inmates. The action, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, was prompted by a 2004 report listing things prisons should do to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"United Press International Washington &#8211; Prisons in the United States are following a government directive to purge their libraries of religious books, causing outrage among many inmates. The action, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, was prompted by a 2004 report listing things prisons should do to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-09-10T15:55:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books","og_description":"United Press International Washington &#8211; Prisons in the United States are following a government directive to purge their libraries of religious books, causing outrage among many inmates. The action, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, was prompted by a 2004 report listing things prisons should do to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-09-10T15:55:42+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious","name":"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-09-10T15:55:42+00:00","dateModified":"2007-09-10T15:55:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/prisons-tossing-out-religious#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Prisons Tossing Out Religious Books"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}