Rolling Stone has rejected a pre-scheduled ad for an updated, youth-targeted Bible, published by the country’s largest Bible publisher, Zondervan. The magazine cited an unwritten policy against religious messages in advertisements, and objected to the advertising campaign’s use of the word “truth.” The text which accompanies a picture of a pretty, spiritually-questing man doesn’t mention God, but offers the book as a source of “real truth” amidst the “endless media noise and political spin,” and every ad repeats the tag-line, “‘Timeless truth; Today’s language.'” The general manager of Rolling Stone’s parent company, Wenner Media, made a perfunctory political statement, assuring the public that he wasn’t personally opposed to the religious message in calling the Bible “real truth,” but the magazine wasn’t “‘in the business of publishing advertising for religious messages.'” Though the reasons for the rejection seem more shallow than insidious — marketing professor Paul Lane speculates that the company is trying to protect its, ahem, “‘counter-culture image'” — it comes just weeks after the United Church of Christ controversy, wherein two broadcast stations turned down a church ad deemed “too controversial” for promoting tolerance of homosexuality. We’ll stick with our pal Jer on this one: censorship’s a bad thing.