The Gideon Removal Project is in it's early stages: we have discussed this and clearly there is a desire to take things forward.

Project Goals and Phases

Phase 1:
Goal - Remove 1000 individual bibles from hotel rooms. This is our initial goal.
Goal - Get 50 independent hotels to remove the Bibles.
Goal - Develop the Sticker Packs and make these available for download or purchase

Phase 2:
Goal - Ship 100 packs of bible defacement stickers
Goal - Get at least one Hotel Chain to remove Gideon bibles en-masse

Content and Materials

1) We require a short list of notable bible verses to be gathered - this is to take the place of the Gideon's "verses to read if you are... troubled, alone etc". These can be gathered from the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, but we will need ten or so notable ones.

2) We need some assistance with artwork and text content for the project website. This should be a simple four or five page website, so not a great amount of effort is required.

3) We need someone to produce form letters to send to Hotels, highlighting the gideons bible in the rooms, and asking them to remove them (or to make "non-bible" rooms available, just as they have non-smoking rooms). We want these to be downloadable as PDFs.

Web Dev Resource

1) We are looking to have a key "stickiness" elements on the website - a "church roof fund" style thermometer which will increase as we remove the bibles. This requires a bit of code to display the meter, a form to accept new removal reports, a management form to approve these (so we don't just get junk enries) and a bit of MySQL/PHP work at the back end to store the data.

2) We will be looking to sell packs of stickers to be adhered to the bibles - we'll need to either implement a shopping cart on the GRP site, or on Godless Heathens (and add the GRP stickers as a saleable item).

Physical Resources

1) Cash! we will be looking to get the stickers printed, which will cost money. We need someone to champion this - get some quotes for the printing, then raise the funds. Once we know exactly what we need, we can solicit donations for this project.

2) Time - as always, the free time of good people is our most scarse resource.


If you can help with the project, either post here (you will need to register to post for the first time), or contact one of the project team directly.

Best of luck!

I noticed that there are also Gideon's bibles provided in the lockers in hospitals/hospices. Is the plan to eventually roll out the project to include all places where these bibles can be found?

I would say so, yes - clearly the Gideons would not place bibles in these locations if they did not believe that they would be useful to them, so pretty much any location that they choose would be fair game!

We picked up one recently, but it's not a "Gideon" brand bible. It has instead been placed by a Scottish Travellers Christian union. Does it count?

I would say so.

I just blagged another one myself yesterday, down in Cornwall

the numbers are fair racking up.

As I mentioned in my mail to thejones, I have a set of basic stickers which I take around with me, and have probably "stickered" about 30 or so in my time.

I have only ever actually removed one, and that was in a holiday cottage my family stayed at in Corwall. I couldn't stand the thought of it being right by my bedside for two weeks worth of holiday - even if it was absolutely plastered with stickers. I tore the pages out of that and led a paper trail through and around the village. I liked that

Perhaps the part of the website http://gideonremoval.godlessheathens.org.uk/callitin.php on which we record the act could be amended to ask what action was taken - STICKERED or REMOVED.

What are the stickers you use Phil?

And yeah, recording both (and any other things we come up with) should be the way forward.

My stickers are pretty basic - just text rather than graphics. I put warnings such as "CAUTION - This book contains sexually explicit and violent scenes. Do not show to minors", "CAUTION - This page contains explicit incest", "CAUTION - this page encourages extreme violence against children" etc, in appropriate places with a page marker sticking out.
I would really love some showy ones with pretty pictures showing our interpretation of what the book is saying

Not all that long ago I used to place little pamphlets in shopping malls around Reading. They were done in MS Word Art with Clip Art piccies, and, as I explained to Ian, that is starting to look seriously dated. But they did arouse a certain amount of interest while they were in fashion, and people picked them up and took them away with them. I can mail people copies if you want to have a blimp at them.
If there are any proper printed ones around, I'll be happy to start it all up again.

Its somewhere to start from.
Which makes it all good.