Thanks to the power of the Internet and hotel websites, you can easily browse amenities for a hotel of your choosing online. Will it have the hair dryer? The ironing board? The free shampoo? The free shuttle to the airport?
Before these amenities were available, there was the Gideon Bible. For the past 100 years, you've been guaranteed to find a Bible in your nightstand drawer. It's looking like The Gideon Bible will be around for another 100 years.
Gideons International is celebrating its 100th anniversary distributing Bibles and has begun efforts to hand out more Scriptures in the U.S. to boost a distribution rate that's remained relatively flat in recent years. Nearly 76.9 million Gideon Scriptures were given out in nearly 85 languages in 187 countries last year. Close to 1.5 billion Scriptures have been distributed since 1908, when the Gideons first began to place Bibles in hotel rooms. The first Gideon Bible was placed in a hotel room in Montana.
Since then, the nondenominational evangelical group run by businessmen has spread its tremendous reach, also giving out free Scriptures at hospitals, schools, prisons and in the military.
Around 1916, the group started distributing Bibles within hospitals, followed by the military, public schools, prisons and colleges and universities.
The Gideons have about 176,000 members, plus their wives, who distribute Scripture around the world, and their numbers have remained steady over the years. The group only allows for evangelical business and professional men to hand out Scripture to its targeted groups, although Gideons allow their wives to hand out Scripture as well in health care settings and in prisons for women.
Each Bible placed in a hotel room has the potential to reach up to 2,300 people in its estimated six-year life span. Research from the hotel industry says that approximately 25% of travelers read the Bibles in their hotel rooms.
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