Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms

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Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms – From mini shampoos and conditioners to unopened tea bags, there are some things in hotel rooms that you can take with you and keep a clear conscience. However, an item often remains in a gray area as to whether it’s up for grabs and whether it’s meant to be picked up from your hotel room. With the unwritten rules of hotel room etiquette, how do you know if the Bible on your nightstand is there for the taking? Your friends here at the Best Western Siesta Key are answering this age old question and providing a little insight into why Bibles are in your hotel room in the first place.

The Bibles found in hotel rooms around the world were likely provided free of charge by the international evangelical organization called The Gideons. The Gideon Bible is not intended to convert hotel guests, but to bring comfort to travelers far from home. The first Bible to find its home in a hotel room in 1899 was meant to bring peace and relief to weary traveling salesmen. Since then, more than 2 billion Bibles have been distributed in hotels and venues.

Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms

Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms

If you were to take the Bible with you or take it out of your hotel room, the Gideons won’t accuse you of stealing it. Some believe that The Gideons actually

Why Bibles Are Disappearing From Hotel Nightstands

You pick up these Bibles, perhaps hoping they will spread the Good Word. However, your hotel staff may disagree. Removing the Bible from its place in a hotel room doesn’t really support the reason it was placed there in the first place, as they are meant to be read by the next guest and so on.

The Gideons are always in constant contact with their local hotels to make sure there is a Bible in every room. They often find themselves replacing Bibles that are lost in rooms and never charge the hotel for these replacements. So whether you feel the need to read the Bible in private, take it with you on your travels to keep the faith close, or add it to your personal collection of books, rest assured, Gideons isn’t calling this a sin.

The intention of The Gideon Bible is that every hotel room is equipped with one so that guests and travelers who enter can take a moment to read, reflect, find solace, and perhaps even take an interest in the Christian faith. If you have any questions, express interest, or want your own copy of the Bible, you are encouraged to call the phone number printed on the front cover. The Gideons will be more than happy to talk and/or provide Bibles to whomever they reach.

If you are staying with us here at the Best Western Siesta Key, you can visit the front desk to ask us for more information about the Bible in your hotel room. We can also clear up any confusion about whether it’s a freebie or how you can get your free copy. An invasive species is defined as “not native to a specific location and having a tendency to spread to a degree that causes harm, in some way upon exposure.” You could say it looks a lot like Gideon’s bibles in a bed drawer.

Bible Hotel Room Hi Res Stock Photography And Images

The Freedom From Religion Foundation thinks so, and is making a big demand from hotel industry consumers asking it to be more hospitable to non-Christian and non-religious clientele by offering “Bible-less” rooms.

Gideons International is “exploiting hotels and motels to proselytize a captive audience,” it told the American Hotel and Motel Association.

In early December, he sent a letter to several companies, including Wyndham Worldwide, Intercontinental Hotel Groups (Holiday Inn), Choice Hotels International (Quality Inn), Hilton Worldwide, G6 Hospitality (Motel 6), Marriott International, Best Western, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group (Radisson, Carlson, Country Inn) and Starwood Hotels and Resorts (Sheraton).

Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms

In total, the 15 companies contacted are responsible for more than 33,000 hotels in the United States and more than 4.1 million rooms internationally.

Can You Take Home The Bible From Your Hotel Room?

“Those who want to read the Bible every day will certainly take precautions to travel with their own copies. The rest of us deserve a break from mindless evangelism when we’re on vacation,” co-chairs Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote on behalf of the 23,000 non-religious members of .

“Most of your guests are freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, or ‘neithers,’ who take deep offense at being charged high fees just to proselytize in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Not only that, the The Bible calls to kill.” unbelievers, apostates, homosexuals, ‘stubborn children’ and women who violate biblical double standards,” he said. As an organization whose members embrace reason and science, it prefers that Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” be placed above the invading Gideons (although the letter does not ask for it).

Calls on the hotel industry to follow the example of Gansevoort Hotel Groups, who, to provide a friendlier environment, have removed religious materials from guest rooms, but provide such materials on request. Many boutique hotels also stopped serving as conduits for Protestant missionaries. Travelodge (United Kingdom) withdrew bibles from more than 500 hotels last August “so as not to discriminate against any religion.” Versions); they bear the name of the group that distributes them.

Gideons International began in 1898, when two traveling salesmen, John H. Nicholson and Samuel E. Hill, arrived at the packed Central Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin for the night.

Is This The End Of The Gideon Hotel Bible?

The two had never met, but there was only one double room left, so they decided to share it. The men began to talk and discovered that they share a common faith and both took up the idea of ​​creating an evangelical association of Christian businessmen.

They decided to try it together. The following year they called a meeting for men interested in coming together for “mutual recognition, personal evangelism, and united service for the Lord.” Only one other person showed up to that meeting: William J. Knights, who suggested they name their organization after Gideon, an Old Testament judge who led a small band of men to defeat a much larger army.

As the group grew in its early years, many of the new members were men who often traveled for work and spent most of their nights in hotel rooms. They asked how they could be more effective witnesses for Christ on the road and came up with the idea of ​​providing Bibles to the hotels. They can be used not only by Gideons members while traveling across the country, but also by other guests in need. They started with the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana, then began putting a Bible in every hotel room in America. Since 1908, they have distributed more than 1.7 billion Bibles and have expanded beyond the United States to more than 190 countries.

Why Bibles In Hotel Rooms

The Gideons don’t go from room to room, sliding books around at night like bible elves. When a hotel opens, local Gideons members will present a Bible to the hotel’s general manager in a small ceremony, then give enough books for each room and a few extras to the housekeepers for distribution. In addition to hotel rooms, the Gideons also donate Bibles to military bases, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and students on college campuses.

Bibles For Hotels

Each Bible distributed is free, and the project is fully funded by donations to the group. The Gideons will also replace books that get lost or worn out, and the group says the books have an average lifespan of six years. They also don’t get warped when people ignore the “no stealing” rule when it comes to the Bible. They prefer that you only get the book if you need it badly.

Based on the success of the Gideons Bible project (the group’s own statistics say that 25% of people who check into a hotel room will read the Bible placed there), religious groups began distributing their literature on a regular basis. free to hotels. The Marriott hotel chain, founded by a Mormon, places the Book of Mormon in many of its rooms, and many hotels also offer Buddhist, Hindu, Christian Scientist or Scientologist books in addition to the standard Gideon Bible. Have you ever noticed that hotel rooms always seem to have a bible somewhere in the room? Why? Why are there bibles in hotel rooms?

The short answer to this question is pretty obvious. There are Bibles in hotel rooms because people take the initiative to put them there. There is also a group largely responsible for this, the Gideons.

The Gideons came about because two businessmen named John H. Nicholson and Samuel E. Hill met one night while staying at a busy hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin.

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The hotel was so full that night that the only way

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