(at least) 23 Minutes of Doubt

I experienced a new conundrum in the library this week.

On one of the bookshelves, we have a book request form.  It's a clipboard with a pen attached to it on a string, and the grid asks for the student's name, the book title, the author, and the student's e-mail address (so we can let them know if/when the book becomes available).

Probably, I'm setting myself up for something dramatic here, but for the most part, the book requests are relatively innocent: whatever adaptation is hitting the big screen soon, the occasional Nicholas Sparks sap-fest, the latest book or two in a manga series.  We did have one joker facetiously request Fifty Shades of Grey, but I kind of expected that.

The book that troubles me is none of the above: it's a book called 23 Minutes in Hell, which is supposedly a true account of a man's twenty-three minute foray into the land of fire and brimstone.  The book's back cover claims to be able to answer various details about hell, such as whether or not "good" people go to hell ("good" is in quotes in the descriptor-blurb), if there are children in hell, the details on demons and "levels" of hell, et cetera.  The end of the descriptor-blurb says, "Even if you don't believe my story, I hope you will believe the Scriptures and avoid hell just the same."

When I started working here, I came fully expecting to do battle with conservative community members over The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian or The Glass Castle or The Color Purple.  We happily participated in Banned Book Week activities, and the student media assistants put together a wonderful display of banned books complete with caution tape loaned from our student resource officer.  I love the idea of celebrating the freedom to read.

I do not, however, love the idea of endorsing religious propaganda.

So here I am, stuck (pardon the cliche) between a rock and a hard place.  Here is a short list of problems irking me about this book request right now:

• I don't want add a book of dubious credibility to my library, but I don't want to tell anyone what they can't read, either.
• I take greater issue with this book's content than our community's general population would.  I can't even claim that I don't want to bring in anything preachy, because I wouldn't hesitate to bring in, say, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.  This whole conundrum makes me feel like a bit of a biased hypocrite.
• What if, on the off-chance, there is a small contingent (emphasis here on small -- "minuscule" or "microscopic" might be better words) of people who adamantly oppose any and all religious texts in schools, and would go utterly bananas if I ordered it?
• Related to the above, if I were a parent, I would admittedly be one of those who protested this book.  Anything religious in schools is something I am particularly sensitive about (I am not particularly religious, and am extremely wary of any kind of proselytizing or evangelism, especially in schools).  Do I object to this book as a librarian, or do I object to it personally?   
• Perhaps most superficially...how big of a jerk do I look like if I order everything else on the request list, and ignore this one book?

I would like to think that there is some easy solution to this problem, and my naivete as a brand-new school librarian is all that is to blame for my anxiety over this.  My media assistant, ever patient with my quirks and worries, suggested digging the book out of a used book store and lending it to him, but not adding it to the collection (so that I could assuage my guilt at the idea of keeping a book out of someone's hands).

Who knows?  The title of this entry is a bit misleading...obviously, the book in question has caused me more than a mere 23 minutes of doubt.