TERRE HAUTE — In a rented room, somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota, Rocky Raccoon found solace on his nightstand.
At least that’s how Paul McCartney sang the sad tale of a jilted guy who’d just lost a fight and the girl he loved to a rival.
“Now Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible. Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt to help with good Rocky’s revival.”
McCartney crooned those classic lines in 1968 on The Beatles’ “White Album.” Four decades later, Bibles from The Gideons International can be found in hotel and motel rooms in 180 countries, distributed quietly and methodically by a legion of members and volunteers.
That practice began exactly a century ago this month in a Montana hotel, not far from those Black Hills where the fictional Rocky met his match. Since then, The Gideons say they’ve circulated 1.3 billion Bibles worldwide, including 500 million in the past 10 years. They place the books in hotels and motels free of charge, and replace them every six years. They rely on donations from churches, individuals, corporations and foundations to produce the Bibles in 80 different languages.
The survival of such a tradition, between religion and an industry, for so long is a testament to The Gideons’ determination.
“They’re an amazing organization on several levels,” said Paul Gutjahr, an associate professor of English at Indiana University and the author of the 1999 book “An American Bible.” Gutjahr also wrote the entry on The Gideons for an upcoming literary release, tentatively titled “The Oxford Companion to the Book.”
The nondenominational evangelical group, founded in 1899 in Janesville, Wis., is now based in Nashville, Tenn. It labels itself as the nation’s “oldest business and professional men’s organization.” Gideons International has 260,000 members and “an untold number of supporters.”
“It’s all volunteer, practically,” Gutjahr said, “which is amazing. They’re just very committed to getting the word out.”
That word is out in the open in the rooms of some hotels, such as the Holiday Inn-Terre Haute along U.S. 41 on the city’s southside. Bill Burdine, its longtime area manager, opts to have The Gideons Bible resting atop the rooms’ nightstands, rather than inside the drawers.
“In this hotel, the Bible is displayed, because that’s my choice,” said Burdine, in his 46th year in the lodging business. The hotel also adds a “Travelers’ Prayer” bookmark inside the Bibles.
Each time a new hotel opens, The Gideons arrive, say a prayer in the lobby and place the Bibles in rooms, Burdine explained. He calls that practice “a tremendous service.”
In Terre Haute, the Gideons most recently stocked the new extended-stay Candlewood Suites on Wabash Avenue. On its opening day last month, one of the finishing touches was the distribution of four boxes of Bibles into its 81 suites. The owner of that hotel and numerous others sees that moment as a routine order of business.
“We’re more in a habit of it,” said Tim Dora, co-owner of Dora Bros. Hospitality Corp., which runs hotels in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and North Dakota.
Some get taken
Like the local Holiday Inn, the nearby Drury Inn openly displays The Gideons Bible atop each nightstand. Many get read, said Crystal Houser, the Drury’s front office manager for the past nine years. “We’ve actually had guests ask if they can take one, and we say, ‘Sure, we have extras,’” she said. “I just think it’s great that people still want one.”
Sometimes, travelers simply take the books. “Some of them disappear, and some of them don’t,” said Sean O’Rourke, general manager of Terre Haute’s Fairfield Inn for the past 10 years.
The Gideons anticipate that. Their six-year replacement cycle overcompensates for the number lost to wear and tear. Besides, a guest leaving with a Bible marks a success, too, The Gideons say.
“That people are still taking these [Bibles] out of hotel rooms shows they must be making some impact,” said Gutjahr. Spiritual needs appear to be the cause of such thefts, because Gideons Bibles have little resale value. “It’s not like you’re taking a Krugerrand out of the hotel room,” he added.
The organization’s Web site, www.gideons.org, cites testimonials of lost travelers, saved from the brink of suicide and despair by turning to their bedside Bibles. The Gideons estimate that each hotel Bible is seen by 2,300 people in its six-year lifespan.
The Gideons give the 100-year milestone of that outreach low-key treatment. It was noted at a Gideons conference in Louisville, Ky., earlier this year. Otherwise, they’ll pass the century mark this month with little fanfare, a characteristic of the group.
“We’re kind of a funny breed along the way,” Jerry Burden, executive director of Gideons International, said in a somewhat rare interview by telephone from Nashville. “We kind of pause and thank God for what we have and look forward.
“We’re not particularly interested in getting out in the public arena,” he added.
They’ve grabbed a few headlines over the decades, though, most often for distributing Bibles to elementary school students, rather than for their hotel room tradition. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana stepped in back in the 1990s over The Gideons’ efforts to pass out Bibles in schools, said Ken Falk, legal director of the Indiana ACLU.
By contrast, though, Falk emphasized that The Gideons’ practice of supplying Bibles to willing private hotels and motels is something the ACLU would fight to protect, if asked.
“From a free exercise standpoint, The Gideons have a perfect right to do that,” Falk said, “and we would support them.”
Acceptance fades in places
Some people object to the mere presence of a bedside Gideons Bible at hotels. At the Holiday Inn-Terre Haute, Burdine gets one or two complaints a month. “In my early career, I never had a complaint about one,” he said.
Perhaps the most organized opposition, nationally, comes from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a 30-year-old group with 12,600 members, including 162 in Indiana. FFRF sells “Bible warning labels” that members stick on the books’ covers when they find them in hotels. They oppose The Gideons’ status as a men’s organization, the choice of the biblical figure Gideon as a namesake, and the placement of Bibles — unrequested — in rooms.
“We’re kind of fighting back, because atheists and agnostics really don’t appreciate going into a hotel room they’ve paid for and be told that they need to find religion,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, said from the group’s office in Madison, Wis.
Changing attitudes about religion and a growing religious diversity have led some hotel chains to offer more than one religious text. “They’re putting the Koran and the Book of Mormon along with The Gideons Bible,” Joe McInerney, president of the American Hotels and Lodging Association, said last week from his office in Washington, D.C. In Terre Haute, the Fairfield Inn and Spring Hill Suites by Marriott follow Marriott’s policy of offering both The Gideons Bible and The Book of Mormon.
According to that trade group’s statistics, the number of luxury hotels in the U.S. offering in-room religious texts has decreased by 18 percent since 2001. Some have even opted, instead, to put “intimacy kits,” containing condoms and other sexual items, in nightstand drawers.
But McInerney doesn’t see a “big trend” away from nightstand Bibles.
Still, some hotels may eventually opt to place a note in room drawers to inform guests that various religious texts are available upon request from the concierge, McInerney said, “because you have to be sensitive to everybody’s needs.”
In his travels, Gutjahr always checks to see if a Gideons Bible or other texts are in his hotel room. “On the coasts, I’ve noticed there are fewer Bibles,” he said, “but in the South and Midwest, there are still Gideons.”
The Gideons, themselves, have been very polite and prompt in Gutjahr’s encounters with them, and aren’t a “secret society” as they’ve sometimes been characterized. They simply remain “totally committed,” as he put it, to their cause of quietly spreading their faith with each nightstand Bible.
“Part of their success,” Gutjahr said, “is they know what they’re about.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.
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