Why do hotel rooms have Bibles?

Answer 1

Most hotel room Bibles are placed there by members of the Gideons, International, a group of Christian individuals (usually businessmen) who distribute Bibles to hotel rooms, hospitals, and, in the past, schools. (School distribution has been restricted recently due to court rulings invoking the "Establishment Clause" of the Constitution.) See the Related Link, "History of the Gideon Bible," to the left for more information.

Answer 2

For over 100 years, the Gideons and other religious organizations have been placing Bibles in motel/hotel rooms- or more specifically, they make boxes of these Bibles available to motel operators for placement in all their rooms. It has become a traditional over the years, and some motels also place other religious works in rooms as well, such as the Book of Mormon. The Bible that the Gideons place is usually the King James Version (KJV) or the New King James Version.

The "public" motivation for this is to serve as active evangelism to persons who are traveling and might be emotionally distraught or in "need", as the Gideons define it, of their particular religion. There is an unspoken secondary purpose to it as well- since motel rooms are the places of choice for people who might be committing various sinful acts, that Bible could also act as an instrument of rebuke and shame.

These Bibles are provided free to the hotel/motel proprietor, and the Bibles themselves state that the room occupant is free to take it, so technically it is impossible to "steal" one of these Bibles, unlike the towels, sheets and other items in the room. It is completely voluntary on the part of the motel, as to whether or not they allow Bibles in the room, however nearly all of them do in the United States.

This practice is not without controversy. Some people, particularly non-Christian or non-religious people, consider it an unwelcome intrusion upon the room that they are paying for, and will often take religious materials from the room and discard them.