Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

As one could easily guess, most challenges to books arise because the book contains some reference to sex, drugs, curse words, or LGBT lifestyles. Some people would rather pretend such things didn't exist by preventing others from reading about them. I understand opposing certain things, but denying reality always seemed a bit too extreme for me.  I recall how annoying it was in high school when parents would raise some stink that the book we were reading in AP literature actually made reference to sex. They would insist that their (18 year old) child not be exposed to such reality and instead read an alternative "safe" option. I found this so nauseating that it almost kept me from attending a Christian college to study literature since I assumed the censorship would just be that much worse at an all-Christian institution. I went anyway, and yes, met with some censorship but not as much as I've continued to encounter in the greater church world.

I've known people fired from churches simply for owning books by Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. When we were under the gun at our baptist church, our library was censored and Mike was taken to task for quoting the "heretical" Karl Barth. Instead of thoughtfully engaging issues some people made the issues disappear by simply pretending they didn't exist. And the church as a whole has done a good job at it too. Whole sections of the church don't know that any theology exists apart from the last 50 years of evangelical thought or that Dispensational theology isn't the way the church has always believe. There's good reason why people lose their faith in college – when confronted with the messiness of religion, or theology, or textual studies their sheltered minds are taken by surprise and they feel lied to and betrayed by the church that did it's best to keep them from encountering reality.  But some still think it's better (or at least easier) to pretend than to deal with the messiness that is reality. Instead of wrestling with church history or helping our kids respond with love to all the people they encounter, the very discussion gets banned. So kudos to Banned Books Week for forcing us to face those fears instead of hiding from them. For not letting ideologies be used as silencing weapons of oppression.

So to celebrate this affirmation of reality let's share our favorite banned books. (For all the books banned and challenged from May 2008-May 2009, check out this bibliography. And the most frequently banned classics are listed here.) So do you read to your kids books about a family with two mommies? Do you encourage a new generation to discover the angst of Holden Caulfield? Do you enjoy the fantasy realms of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Or do you like deepening your faith by digging into theology? How do you affirm the access to knowledge and the beauty of wrestling with ideas?