More than 100 years later, the group says it has placed more than 2 billion Bibles and New Testaments around the world.ĭavid Bjorem, 79, is a retired Tempe resident and a member of an Arizona Gideon chapter. The first Gideons Bible was placed in a hotel in Montana. A late-night talk about their shared Christian faith would lead to launching the Gideons International association. A few years later, the group decided on an ambitious effort to deliver a Bible to every hotel room in America. They called their plan "The Bible Project." The hotel was so crowded he had to share a room with another traveling businessman, Samuel Hill.
He checked in for a one-night stay, according to the Gideons International’s origins story, told on its website.
On an autumn day in 1898, a traveling businessman named John Nicholson arrived at the Central Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin. It really started in a hotel room in Wisconsin Now, when you stay at the Thunderbird Inn and you open your nightstand drawer, instead of a Bible you will find a small piece of paper with a message. “This is one of several issues we dealt with that what was OK for a private university is different for a public university," he said. Part of that transition was a change in tradition at the Inn. He said Thunderbird has transitioned from a private campus to a public institution. Jay Thorne, a Thunderbird spokesman, told The Arizona Republic the decision to remove the Bibles was made after consulting with ASU officials. “I have… requested that religious materials be removed from the Inn’s guest rooms. The State of Arizona should not promote one set of religious beliefs over others by assuming all of its guests are Christian.Īllen Morrison, Thunderbird’s CEO and director, replied with one paragraph: Certainly, if guests want to read this religious text during their stay, they can bring their own copy or access any of the numerous churches or libraries near the university. It sends the message to non-Christian and non-religious guests that the university expects they should read the Bible, and specifically the version of the bible provided: the Gideon Bible. Providing bibles to Inn guests sends the message that ASU endorses the religious texts. The letter complaining about the Bibles was dated March 4, 2016, and was sent by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national group with a chapter in Phoenix. The gist of the letter: The Bibles needed to go. PREVIOUSLY: Thunderbird campus once training airfield for pilots But financial difficulties led to a partnership with Arizona State University, paving the way for the business school, with students from around the world, to become a public campus. Until December 2014, Thunderbird was a private campus. And for many years, guests could find a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer of their room. The international business campus, founded in 1946, houses the Inn, where skinny palm trees decorate the grounds and the word “Welcome” is spelled out in at least six languages on a lobby wall. The letter, God and a stack of Gideon BiblesĪ few months ago, a lawyer for one of the largest atheist groups in the United States sent a letter to the head of Thunderbird School of Global Management. It started with the complaint, a two-page letter and then a decision. So far, the case of the Bible in the Glendale hotel room doesn't seem headed for a courtroom, but it has drawn the interest of a Scottsdale legal organization that has built a national reputation for its role in pursuing issues like this one. It might seem like an isolated incident in a hotel not many people will ever see, but it has landed in the middle of wider arguments over religious liberty and individual freedoms, arguments that have grown sharper in recent years as courts have weighed in on abortion rights and marriage equality. The people who complained, members of an atheist organization, say the decision to remove the Bibles affirms a principle they say America was founded on - a solid separation between church and state. Christian advocates say it’s another attack on God and another step toward eradicating historic religious traditions. The Bibles were removed after someone complained they didn't belong in a place supported by public dollars. It would have been yours to take home if you needed it. It would have had six words embossed on it in gold lettering: Holy Bible. If you have ever stayed in one of the 134 rooms at the Thunderbird Executive Inn and Conference Center in Glendale, you could have opened the nightstand drawer, reached in and found a Bible.
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