The Holy Bible, along with some other books, was among the top 10 most challenged books in 2015, according to the American Library Association.
The Bible was the 6th most challenged book overall in the country's libraries, a report by the association said. Many other books that were attempted to be removed from the shelves had sexually explicit content.
Top two books that were challenged were 'Looking for Alaska' by John Green, and 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James, which had adult content. Two other books 'Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out' by Susan Kuklin, and 'Two Boys Kissing' by David Levithan were about LGBTs.
'Dog in the Night-Time' was challenged for offensive language and "atheism." 'Nasreen's Secret School: A True story from Afghanistan,' is about a young girl trying to be educated in Afghanistan, which was objected for violence and religious viewpoint.
"You have people who feel that if a school library buys a copy of the Bible, it's a violation of church and state," James LaRue, director at Office for Intellectual Freedom, ALA, was quoted as saying by Associated Press.
Deborah Caldwell Stone, deputy director at the same office under ALA said that objection to Bible was due to "mistaken perception that separation of church and state means publicly funded institutions are not allowed to spend funds on religious information."
The top reasons for challenging the books were sexually explicit content, offensive language, other objections, unsuited for age group, violence, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, Satanism/Occult, nudity, and drugs/alcohol/smoking.
Between 2000 and 2009, schools recorded the most number of objections (1811), followed by school libraries (1639), and public libraries (1217).
A Harris poll conducted in July 2015 showed that trend to raise objection on books with diverse contents was on rise. Of the 2,244 US adults surveyed, 28 percent said that certain material should be removed from libraries. In 2011, the proportion of those wanting to challenge books was only 18 percent.
ALA considers a complaint as a challenge when a written and formal grievance is "filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness."
Stone saidthat Bible was on the list for the first time. Other religious books were also challenged (but not as much as Bible as they did not make it into the top ten), show that faith is "very present on the minds of many people in society."
