If you stay in a hotel room in the U.S. or many other countries of the world, you’ll sometimes find a “Hotel Bible” or sometimes more commonly known as a “Gideon Bible” in the nightstand. Most people know “the Gideons put it there” but really…what’s up with that? How did it start to be and why is it not always the case nowadays?
Well, I found out! 🙂
The history of Gideon Bibles
The Gideons are an evangelical Christian association that was founded in Wisconsin in 1899. The organization began in fall 1898, when two traveling salesmen, John H. Nicholson and Samuel E. Hill, both of Wisconsin, met in a hotel room they shared, where they discussed the formation of an association. In May 1899, the two met again and decided the goal of their association would be to unite traveling salesmen for evangelism. They decided to call their organization The Gideons, after Gideon in the Bible, a man, “who was willing to do exactly what God wanted him to do, regardless of his own judgment as to the plans or results.”
The Gideons began distributing free Bibles in 1908, when the first Bibles were placed in the rooms of a hotel in Montana. In the 100+ years since, they’ve become Gideon International and, thanks to donations, distribute Bibles, for free, to hotels all around the world. They’re also the ones who distribute free Bibles to hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, etc.
Why is this changing?
Essentially, because the U.S., as well as the world, is changing. Although Pew Research Center suggests that roughly 63% of Americans identify with being Christian, that number has been shrinking for decades (it was 90% fifty years ago, 78% fifteen years ago, and is expected to be “minority religion” [less than 50%] in a few decades). And that’s to say nothing of the fact that if you look at the world as a whole, only roughly 31% of the world’s population is Christian.
Boutique hotel chain Provenance Hotels offers a “spiritual menu” in their nightstands.
In the 21st century, where world travel is an everyday occurrence, more organizations, including international hotel conglomerates, are acknowledging that many people of non-Christian faiths are sleeping in their rooms and may not want access to a Bible. Or maybe to not JUST a Bible. So…
- Marriott International, which was founded by a devout Mormon, has Gideon Bibles AND The Book of Mormon in their hotel rooms (and since their merger with Starwood, former Starwood hotels also have both books). Well, except when they don’t…
- …Case in point, Moxy and Edition brand hotels, both Marriott brands aimed at Millennials (40% of which claim no religious affiliation), have no religious materials in their rooms, because “…the religious books don’t fit the personality of the brands,” said Marriott spokeswoman Felicia Farrar McLemore.
- In the Middle East, where, by far, Muslimism is the most popular religion, chances are good you may find a Quaran in the hotel room (and sometimes a prayer mat, too).
- Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), which is the parent company of Holiday Inn, Kimpton, Crowne Plaza, Candlewood Suites and several other hotel brands, doesn’t require managers of more than 6,000 hotels in nearly 100 countries to put Bibles in each room. “Our hotels have the flexibility to offer religious materials to their guests if they choose to do so,” said spokeswoman Caroline Huston.
- You can find The Teaching of Buddha (sometimes next to a Gideon Bible, sometimes not) in many hotel rooms in Japan. You may find them in some hotel rooms in the U.S., as well. Either way, they’re provided by the Society for the Promotion of Buddhism, which is based out of Tokyo.
- Travelodge hotels in Britain removed Bibles from their rooms, “in order not to discriminate against any religion,” the company said (the hotels keep copies at the front desk that guests can borrow upon request).
- Publications from The Church of Scientology or Christian Scientists can be found in some privately-owned hotels or small chains.
- The Wyndham Hotel Group, which is the parent company of Travelodge, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, and several other hotel brands, doesn’t require Bibles in any of its 22 brands of hotels worldwide.
- More and more copies of the Bhagavad Gita are showing up in hotel rooms, thanks to the work of local Hare Krishna temples and the fact that roughly 40% of hotel owners in the U.S. are of Indian descent (here’s why). (nearly 80% of the population of India is Hindu).
- One non-religious reason why there are fewer Bibles in U.S. hotel rooms is that some hotels are taking a more “bare-bones” approach and using shelves instead of furniture with drawers (here’s why). Apparently hotel owners, for various reasons, don’t want to leave Bibles out on shelves, out in the open.
- There was also this on Reddit:
The bottom line is, whereas Gideon Bibles could be found in 95% of U.S. hotels in 2006, they were in only 48% of them in 2016. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is definitely a matter of Your Mileage May Vary, but no matter which side of the fence you’re on, you have to admit that the times, they are a-changin’…
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
5 comments
Neither are “not” OK.
I think you missed the point of the article.
… did you mean to write ‘Muslimism’ instead of Islam?
TBH, I went back and forth between the two, like 17 times. Muslimism is a word (or if it’s not, I now decree that it is LOL). Either way, y’all know what I was going for, so it’s all good. 😉
As someone who places these in hotels in the Bible Belt, I will tell you the real reason things are changing has nothing to do with religious preferences and everything to do with bureaucracy combined with changes in work ethic. For starters, that 47% number was retracted as a misprint by the outlet that published it (the actual percentage, as I recall was in the 70s). If I know my history at all, there was once upon a time that kind of error in a publication would have been considered a big deal, but don’t feel bad about the fact that you overlooked that fact because who knows whether the “real” percentage was anywhere close to real. Hotel managers change as often as the seasons, and the owners change almost as often, with many of them not having a clue about the Bibles in the rooms (all but one hotel in my county in Southwest Florida has bibles in the rooms, but take a guess at how many general managers even know that; one manager of a mid-class hotel that I had previously been in the rooms of insists there’s a Bible in every room but nobody ever opens the drawers, which really means the housekeepers never open the drawers, which from experience means there’s probably cigarette butts and other garbage to be found in them, maybe even a cockroach or two). I’ve also stayed in hotels that had Bibles despite the organization’s database saying the front desk refused them, which almost certainly means the front desk didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s not just Gideons that have this issue; I happen to be aware that governmental inspectors frequently encounter clueless management (“Division of Weights and Measures, what is that, a scam? No, you can’t have access to our registers and their scales, it’s against corporate policy!” or “Mr. Census taker with federal identification, you need to leave the apartment complex you were instructed to visit because I don’t think you should be bothering my tenants after 5 PM, and if you don’t I’m going to call 911 on you and waste the police department’s time!” The second one is from personal experience, working for the Census Bureau part time.)
On the other side of things, Gideons are all volunteers, and volunteer labor is even harder to come by than paid labor, and we all know how many businesses are short staffed these days. I have no doubt there are hotels that have never even been visited by local Gideons, and I know there’s others that haven’t been visited in years simply because of lack of labor.
By the way, I’m a millennial.