{"id":366,"date":"2009-09-02T00:45:58","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T04:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=366"},"modified":"2009-09-11T09:53:50","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T13:53:50","slug":"bibles-in-the-night-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/02\/bibles-in-the-night-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibles in the Night Stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the vein of\u00a0the American Atheist’s complaint against NASA<\/a>, a variety of similarly-minded groups continue to bring accusations of wrongdoing against\u00a0government-associated religious organizations.\u00a0 For example, the ACLU has\u00a0criticized\u00a0the Gideons providing religious materials while in some association with a government entity (including the Gideons’ interaction with the US military<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Controversies notwithstanding, the ubiquitous nature of the Gideons ministry almost inevitably leads to the never-gets-old joke:<\/p>\n

How do they get those Bibles in all those locked hotel rooms?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, in 1996 evidence arose that\u00a0the Gideons were successful in getting a Bible into one of the most inaccessible nightstands in the world; in fact, it’s not even in<\/em> the world.<\/p>\n

NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid<\/a>\u00a0spent 188 days in space onboard Russia’s now defunct Mir<\/em> space station in 1996. (Lucid was born in China as the daughter of missionaries. She is still currently an astronaut.)\u00a0 As noted on NASA’s history site<\/a>,\u00a0Lucid said that she always carried a small Bible with her, and during her stay she also noticed that a Cosmonaut had a Gideon’s New Testament, in Russian, in his “nightstand”…<\/p>\n

As an aside, another “urban legend” of the Gideons also involves the space program.\u00a0 After Apollo 8’s controversial reading of the creation account<\/a> from Genesis (again, recently highlighted by the American Atheists<\/a>),\u00a0a Japanese reporter called asking for the text of the transmission.<\/p>\n

A Japanese newsman telephoned the National Aeronautics and Space Administration newsroom in Houston moments after the Apollo 8 space crew read the first verses of Genesis to earth on Christmas Eve while orbiting the moon.\u00a0 He explained that he didn’t have time to come to the newsroom because of a fast-approaching deadline and asked if someone would read him a transcript of the message.<\/p>\n

The NASA public affairs officer asked, “Where are you?”\u00a0 The newsman replied, “In my hotel room.”<\/p>\n

“Look in the bottom drawer of your bureau,” the newsman was told.\u00a0 There lay a copy of the Gideon Bible.<\/p>\n

“Ah,” sighed the newsman. “NASA public affairs [is] very efficient.\u00a0 [They] suppl[ied] an exact transcript right in [the] hotel room.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This story apparently first appeared in Aviation Week<\/em> and was quoted in 1969 issues of the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle<\/a>,\u00a019 March 1969\u00a0(page 4), and FLIGHT International<\/a>, 16 January 1969 (page 116).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the vein of\u00a0the American Atheist’s complaint against NASA, a variety of similarly-minded groups continue to bring accusations of wrongdoing against\u00a0government-associated religious organizations.\u00a0 For example, the ACLU has\u00a0criticized\u00a0the Gideons providing religious materials while in some association with a government entity (including the Gideons’ interaction with the US military). Controversies notwithstanding, the ubiquitous nature of the Gideons ministry almost inevitably leads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,20,23,4,35,22,21,17,10],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-aclu","tag-atheism","tag-bible","tag-churchandstate","tag-gideons","tag-missionary","tag-nasa","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}