Religious Classics, brought to you by the Bureau of Prisons

This seems more like a bad decision than an unconstitutional one. There's a story in the New York Times about how prison chaplains have been given a list of acceptable religious books for prisoners. The dangers of religious extremism somehow make it necessary to allow prison libraries to stock only books on a list created by experts. As the spokesperson says: "We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts."

But there's no money to replace the books which are no longer allowed. The reporter interviewed an anonymous chaplain.

The effort is unnecessary, the chaplain said, because chaplains routinely reject any materials that incite violence or disparage, and donated materials already had to be approved by prison officials. Prisoners can buy religious books, he added, but few have much money to spend.

The common-sense solution, of course, is to create a list of inappropriate books and trust the chaplains to weed out other problematic works. However, from a bureaucratic point of view, a small list is probably much easier to manage. It's just wasteful, unwise, and possibly unbalanced:

Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality.”

“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame (who edited “The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” which did make the list), said the Catholic list had some glaring omissions, few spiritual classics and many authors he had never heard of.

“I would be completely sympathetic with Catholic chaplains in federal prisons if they’re complaining that this list is inhibiting,” he said, “because I know they have useful books that are not on this list."