Valley religious leaders pen letter opposing book ban

A group of local religious leaders representing different faiths and denominations have joined together to pen a letter in opposition of a book ban that has been proposed at school districts throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

Known collectively as the McAllen Faith Leaders Network, the religious group has been meeting informally once a month to discuss issues of faith and the ongoings in their community.

Recently their attention has turned toward a pastors’ group known as Latino Faith, which is associated with the Christian nationalist group Remnant Alliance. Latino Faith has called upon local school boards to remove books on a list of about 600 titles from their libraries.

The effort is part of an operation of the Florida-based Citizens Defending Freedom USA Foundation Inc.

“We got together and said, ‘This is not what our faith teaches,’” Rabbi Nathan Farb of Temple Emanuel said. “It’s not what we believe how decisions should be made in our public schools, and we felt the need to speak out about it.”

In the letter, which was signed by the rabbi and seven other religious leaders, the group states that they are nonpartisan and motivated “only by the shared drive to help our city live out the very best of the values of our faiths.”

Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 900 into law in September last year. The law aims to rid school libraries of inappropriate books by requiring book vendors to rate materials.

In May, Pastor Luis Cabrera, national director of Latino Faith, urged school boards in Harlingen and Brownsville to remove 676 books ​​that his group described as containing graphic sexuality.

He later said on Facebook that his group would be working to remove those books from school libraries in McAllen, San Benito, Mission, Edinburg, Pharr, Mercedes, Weslaco and Los Fresnos.

“As religious leaders in South Texas, we hold nothing more important than our religious freedoms,” the letter goes on to state. “For this reason, we strongly support the independence of our congregations, our schools, and the separation of church and state.”

“We do not believe that the government should have a say in our religious practice,” the letter continues. “We don’t believe that a religious organization should exert decision making power over our public schools or any public body. We patriotically support these rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and we oppose efforts to undermine them.”

The rabbi said that he and other religious leaders who signed the open letter believe that educators and librarians should be trusted to do their jobs without the influence of religion.

“That just doesn’t make sense to us when we have excellent educators and librarians that are checking our libraries, and they are seeing which books are there and which books are appropriate for our kids in our schools,” Farb said.

“​​There are faith leaders who’ve signed this letter who operate their own schools or educational programs, and just like they would not want an outside organization telling them what they should or should not include in their programs, we don’t think that it’s right in the public schools either.”

As of May 21, the Brownsville Independent School District had removed five books from its libraries, including “Jay’s Gay Agenda,” “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Juliet Takes a Breath,” “Flamer,” and “The Big Question Book of Sex and Consent.”

“The main thing is we want to make sure that our educational leaders — our educators, administrators, librarians — we want to make sure that they know they have the support of the religious community in carrying out their responsibilities,” Farb said. “They have our support and our trust, and we don’t believe it is the job of religious leaders to tell public school educators how they should be doing their job.”