For over 100 years, travelers have checked into US motel rooms and found the Gideon Bible

The Gideon Bible has become a symbol of America's roadside culture and Protestant tradition

Luis Andres Henao

Wednesday 26 August 2026 17:08 BST



“Rocky Raccoon checked into his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible.”

Paul McCartney explained those famous lines in the song by The Beatles, saying these Bibles “were in every hotel in America.” He’d never seen something like that in England.

For more than a century, countless have found it in the bedside drawers of American hotel and motel rooms. It has become a symbol of America’s roadside culture and Protestant tradition. It’s mentioned in lyrics, films, Broadway shows.

“The Gideon Bible is a peculiarly and amazingly American object,” says Lori Anne Ferrell, author of “The Bible and the People.”

It began with Gideons International, an organization of evangelical business and professional men founded in 1899.

One of its members, working on a railroad expansion project, gets off the train in the town of Superior in western Montana, and checks into a hotel. He asks the owner if he can place a Bible at the front desk. She responds with a more ambitious proposal: Place a Bible in each of the hotel rooms.

The group says that it has distributed more than 2.5 billion Bibles worldwide since that day in 1908. It was the year that Ford Motor Co. began manufacturing the Model T, the first low-priced car that introduced motoring to the masses.

The Apostle Peter in Rome

Jesus’ chief disciple examined
Nicola Denzey Lewis June 28, 2026 

In this blog post, Brown University Religious Studies professor Nicola Denzey Lewis answers frequently asked questions about the apostle Peter. Denzey Lewis appears in the CNN series Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery, which aims to investigate artifacts that shed light on the world in which Jesus lived.—Ed.

What traditions connect the apostle Peter to Rome?

The Repentant St. Peter by El Greco. Photo: The Phillips Collection.

Jesus’ chief disciple, Peter (also called Simon Peter or Cephas), has been associated with Rome for nearly 2,000 years. The earliest testimony to the apostle Peter’s presence in Rome is a letter from a Christian deacon named Gaius. Writing probably toward the end of the second century C.E.—so, around 170 or 180 C.E.—Gaius tells about the wondrous things in Rome, including something called a tropaion (see below for more) where Peter established a church—in fact, the Church, the Roman Catholic church at the site where St. Peter’s Basilica is today. But there are other traditions besides Peter’s tropaion.

One early Christian text, the Apocryphal Acts of Peter, recounts many things that Peter did in the city. At one point in Acts of Peter, Peter is taunted by a flamboyant heretic, Simon Magus. Simon challenges Peter to a flying contest around the Roman Forum, but Peter’s prayers make Simon crash to the ground, proving that Simon’s powers are not as great as his own.

At the end of this text, Peter, not wishing to be martyred for his faith, flees from Roman authorities on the Via Appia leading out of the city. Rather unexpectedly, Peter meets Jesus, who is traveling in the opposite direction. He asks Jesus, “Where are you going?” Jesus tells Peter that he is going to Rome “to be crucified again.” Peter realizes, from this, that he cannot flee from his fate.

“Where are you going?” in Latin is “Quo Vadis?” and there’s a medieval church in Rome called the Church of Quo Vadis at the spot where Peter met Jesus. To prove that his vision was real, you can still see there a bit of marble pavement which the faithful say miraculously preserve Jesus’ footprints.

Mamdani-backed socialist primary winner founded group whose goal is to ‘eradicate' Western civilization

Darializa Avila Chevalier helped launch Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which said it wants to end the West

 By Peter D'Abrosca Fox News

Published June 25, 2026 9:50am EDT


The socialist backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani who won Tuesday night’s primary election in New York’s 13th Congressional District founded a group in college that called for the total destruction of the West.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, a Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress who made career out of "community organizing," wrote in her biography for an opinion piece in independent news outlet The Electronic Intifada that she "helped launch the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign Columbia University Apartheid Divest."

"We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization," the group said in a now-deleted 2024 Instagram post.

In May 2024, eight years after she graduated from Columbia, Chevalier was back on campus advocating alongside the group she founded, known as CUAD, wearing a keffiyeh and a t-shirt emblazoned with the group's name.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 13th Congressional District, speaks with a voter in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan on June 14, 2026, in New York, N.Y. (Shuran Huang/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Avila Chevalier was interviewed by the Associated Press at the school's infamous encampment against Israel that year, which was later broken up by police.

Only months after that, CUAD, caused a firestorm when it reportedly posted its goal of eradicating Western Civilization.

A Brief History of the Maypole Dance

 

A traditional Maypole is raised in Glastonbury. Matt Cardy / Getty Images

By 
Patti Wigington
Updated on June 25, 2019


The maypole dance is a spring ritual long known to Western Europeans. Usually performed on May 1 (May Day), the folk custom is done around a pole garnished with flowers and ribbon to symbolize a tree. Practiced for generations in countries such as Germany and England, the maypole tradition dates back to the dances ancient people used to do around actual trees in hopes of harvesting a large crop.

Today, the dance is still practiced and holds special significance to pagans, including Wiccans, who have made a point to take part in the same customs their ancestors did. But people both new and old to the tradition may not know the complicated roots of this simple ritual. The history of the maypole dance reveals that a variety of events gave rise to the custom.

A Tradition in Germany, Britain, and Rome

Historians have suggested that maypole dancing originated in Germany and traveled to the British Isles courtesy of invading forces. In Great Britain, the dance became part of a fertility ritual held every spring in some areas. By the Middle Ages, most villages had an annual maypole celebration. In rural areas, the maypole was typically erected on the village green, but a few places, including some urban neighborhoods in London, had a permanent maypole that stayed up year round.

The ritual was also popular in ancient Rome, however. The late Oxford professor and anthropologist E.O. James discusses the Maypole's connection to Roman traditions in his 1962 article "The Influence of Folklore on the History of Religion." James suggests that trees were stripped of their leaves and limbs, and then decorated with garlands of ivy, vines, and flowers as part of the Roman spring celebration. This may have been part of the festival of Floralia, which began on April 28. Other theories include that the trees, or poles, were wrapped in violets as an homage to the mythological couple Attis and Cybele.

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A look at highlights of Vatican II on 60th anniversary of its wrap

An undated photo shows prelates during the Council Hall in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican during the third session of the Second Vatican Council. (OSV News photo/Ernst Herb, KNA)

December 7, 2025
By Alexander Brüggemann

The Second Vatican Council, which after three years of dialogue and document drafting closed on Dec. 8, 1965, changed the face of the church, and opened it to the modern world. The council, opened under Pope John XXIII and closed under his successor, Pope Paul VI, initiated a comprehensive renewal, with major council texts released on hot-button church issues. As the church commemorates 60 years since the closing of Vatican II, here are seven key issues and documents that serve as its legacy for future generations.

Pope Paul VI sits in the “cathedra” or bishop’s chair during the Second Vatican Council in July 1965 in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. (OSV News photo/Ernst Herb, KNA)

Understanding of the church: “Lumen gentium” (1964), one of the four primary constitutions of the council, sets out the new self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church. It defines the church as a community of believers, as the “people of God” on their journey through time. In this constantly reforming church, a “common priesthood” of all believers is emphasized — something realized in different forms with clergy and laity. The constitution emphasizes the role of the college of bishops who lead the church “with Peter and under Peter,” as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, reminded years later. In several decrees, the council drafted guidelines for a contemporary form of Christian life and service in spiritual vocations for priests, religious and laity. The importance of the vocation of the laity is emphasized by the council fathers and the training of priests was reorganized. The church’s missionary activity was given a new theological foundation in the decree “Ad gentes.” In the decree “Christus dominus” (1965), on the episcopal pastoral office in the church, the leadership function of the bishop in his diocese was strengthened.

The Pagan Roots of Christmas (Dark Truth Revealed)

Christmas: its origins and traditions (9)

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Who Were the Pilgrims Who Celebrated the First Thanksgiving?

Photo caption

The Landing of the Pilgrims in 1620, a tapestry by Mabelle Linnea Holmes.

—Jamestown-Yorktown Educational Trust, Virginia / Bridgeman Images

An NEH-funded film revisits the Puritan Separatists who arrived aboard the Mayflower.

Craig Lambert

HUMANITIES, November/December 2015, Volume 36, Number 6

In 1620, the Mayflower plowed across the Atlantic through headwinds and ocean currents at an incredibly slow two miles per hour. The overcrowded vessel’s crossing took more than two harrowing months. On the way, its 102 passengers witnessed an astonishing scene. During a fierce storm, an indentured servant named John Howland had come topside for fresh air when the ship rolled violently, casting him into the raging sea. He sank well beneath the waves. Such a fate almost certainly meant death by drowning. Yet, somehow, Howland had managed to grab a halyard on his way overboard, and desperately clung to it long enough for the crew to haul him back to safety.

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Presidential Message on the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel

Presidential Message on the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel

The White House
September 29, 2025

Today, I salute the millions of Christian believers in the United States and around the world observing the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel.

According to sacred Scripture, when the Devil rebelled against God in Heaven, Saint Michael and his legion of angels cast Satan down to Earth—triumphantly reasserting God’s sovereignty over all creation. For 2,000 years, Christians have looked to Saint Michael the Archangel for protection, strength, and courage in times of conflict, distress, and doubt.

In 1886, nearly 140 years ago, Pope Leo XIII, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, fearing for the future of the western world, introduced the legendary Prayer to Saint Michael, which is still recited to this day in churches and homes all across our Nation and throughout the world:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

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The 80th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner

 The 80th Annual Dinner

This year’s Dinner will take place at the Waldorf Astoria New York on October 16, 2025.

The 80th Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner

Thursday, October 16, 2025
New York, NY

The 80th Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner benefiting women and children in need will take place on October 16, 2025, at the Waldorf Astoria New York, 301 Park Ave.

We invite you to join us for a lighthearted evening celebrating our Happy Warrior, Robert K. Kraft, and keynote speakers, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo.

Questions?

For general inquiries, please contact us at 646.794.3315 or AlSmith.Foundation@archny.org

For media inquiries, please click here.

View our 2025 Invitation & RSVP Card

To view photos of last year's dinner, please click here.

View our 2025 Invitation & RSVP Card

Since its first dinner in 1946, The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner has raised millions of dollars for New York’s most vulnerable women and children. The Dinner has featured renowned cultural, business, and political figures, including most major party presidential nominees during election years since 1960.

Today the dinner is a cultural landmark, a living memorial to one of New York’s most beloved sons, remembered as the first Roman Catholic presidential candidate for a major party and a four-term governor who catalyzed labor reform and social security legislation in America.

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