Dianna M. Náñez

The Republic | azcentral.com

If you have ever stayed in one of the 134 rooms at the Thunderbird Executive Inn and Conference Center in Glendale, you could have opened the nightstand drawer, reached in and found a Bible.

Not anymore.

It would have had six words embossed on it in gold lettering: Holy Bible. Placed By The Gideons.

It would have been yours to take home if you needed it. Yours to ignore if you didn’t.

Not anymore.

The Bibles were removed after someone complained they didn't belong in a place supported by public dollars. The people who complained, members of an atheist organization, say the decision to remove the Bibles affirms a principle they say America was founded on — a solid separation between church and state. Christian advocates say it’s another attack on God and another step toward eradicating historic religious traditions.

It might seem like an isolated incident in a hotel not many people will ever see, but it has landed in the middle of wider arguments over religious liberty and individual freedoms, arguments that have grown sharper in recent years as courts have weighed in on abortion rights and marriage equality. So far, the case of the Bible in the Glendale hotel room doesn't seem headed for a courtroom, but it has drawn the interest of a Scottsdale legal organization that has built a national reputation for its role in pursuing issues like this one.

It started with the complaint, a two-page letter and then a decision.

The letter, God and a stack of Gideon Bibles

A few months ago, a lawyer for one of the largest atheist groups in the United States sent a letter to the head of Thunderbird School of Global Management.

The international business campus, founded in 1946, houses the Inn, where skinny palm trees decorate the grounds and the word “Welcome” is spelled out in at least six languages on a lobby wall. And for many years, guests could find a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer of their room.

Until December 2014, Thunderbird was a private campus. But financial difficulties led to a partnership with Arizona State University, paving the way for the business school, with students from around the world, to become a public campus.

PREVIOUSLY: Thunderbird campus once training airfield for pilots

The letter complaining about the Bibles was dated March 4, 2016, and was sent by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national group with a chapter in Phoenix. The gist of the letter: The Bibles needed to go.

Providing bibles to Inn guests sends the message that ASU endorses the religious texts. ... It sends the message to non-Christian and non-religious guests that the university expects they should read the Bible, and specifically the version of the bible provided: the Gideon Bible. Certainly, if guests want to read this religious text during their stay, they can bring their own copy or access any of the numerous churches or libraries near the university. The State of Arizona should not promote one set of religious beliefs over others by assuming all of its guests are Christian.

Allen Morrison, Thunderbird’s CEO and director, replied with one paragraph:

“I have… requested that religious materials be removed from the Inn’s guest rooms. I trust that resolves your concerns.”

Jay Thorne, a Thunderbird spokesman, told The Arizona Republic the decision to remove the Bibles was made after consulting with ASU officials.

He said Thunderbird has transitioned from a private campus to a public institution. Part of that transition was a change in tradition at the Inn.

“This is one of several issues we dealt with that what was OK for a private university is different for a public university," he said.

Now, when you stay at the Thunderbird Inn and you open your nightstand drawer, instead of a Bible you will find a small piece of paper with a message.

It really started in a hotel room in Wisconsin

On an autumn day in 1898, a traveling businessman named John Nicholson arrived at the Central Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin. He checked in for a one-night stay, according to the Gideons International’s origins story, told on its website.

The hotel was so crowded he had to share a room with another traveling businessman, Samuel Hill. A late-night talk about their shared Christian faith would lead to launching the Gideons International association. A few years later, the group decided on an ambitious effort to deliver a Bible to every hotel room in America. They called their plan "The Bible Project."

The first Gideons Bible was placed in a hotel in Montana. More than 100 years later, the group says it has placed more than 2 billion Bibles and New Testaments around the world.

David Bjorem, 79, is a retired Tempe resident and a member of an Arizona Gideon chapter. He remembers the day 15 years ago when his pastor pulled him aside and asked if he wanted to become a Gideon.

Only men, specifically business or professional men older than 20, “who adhere to the core spiritual beliefs held by The Gideons International are eligible to join.” Only a pastor can recommend a man for the Gideon association.

Bjorem is a man of science by profession. He said he saw the invitation as a community network, with global reach, for spreading the word of God in a quiet way.

“We don’t preach,” he said. “We just give the Bibles away for free, only if people want the scripture.”

Bjorem said his professional background as a retired meteorologist with the National Weather Service may seem to conflict with his beliefs about God and the Bible.

“You know I’m a scientist, a huge majority of scientists believe in Naturalism,” he said. “Yet to me, I’ll just give you two words: DNA. And the other word is entropy. See, Naturalism doesn’t explain how we wound up here in the first place.”

He said a call for Bibles came in from a Scottsdale hotel a couple of weeks ago. It’s not often, anymore, that a hotel calls for 200 Bibles, he said. He remembers when hotel managers would call for Bibles by the hundreds and invite the Gideons for hotel dedications.

The Scottsdale Gideons still call new hotels to offer free Bibles. But he said many of the modern resorts and boutique hotels aren’t interested. He worries about that.

The man who recruited him has passed away. He worries about that, too.

“When I joined there were about 50 people in our camp,” he said. “The guys got old and died.”

So he keeps an eye out for young recruits and brainstorms with other Gideons about new places and people who may want a free Bible. About once a year, they join other Valley Gideon chapters and stand on Arizona college campuses handing out Bibles to strangers.

The chapters also make an annual visit to public schools. Bjorem says they know the rules, so they stand on the public sidewalk, they give the school a courtesy call and they only hand Bibles to students who want one.

He’s seen vehement reactions from parents, usually screaming from their car windows.

“When parents yell, it’s vitriolic,” he said. “Some parents will say, 'Praise God.' But others yell, 'You should know better! You’re poisoning the mind of my children!' "

The feminists who gave birth to the Freedom From Religion Foundation

Annie Laurie Gaylor was a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when she and her late mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1978.

Annie says her mother was a feminist who believed the foundation would serve as a vehicle to respond to what she saw as a budding religious attack on women’s reproductive rights.

The foundation has grown from three founding members to a non-profit with “approximately 23,000 freethinkers: atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree,” according to its website.

In Arizona, the foundation has launched a billboard campaign called “Come Out of the Closet” that featured local atheists. The idea was similar to efforts promoted by Mormon and Muslim organizations fighting stereotypes and aiming to familiarize people with their diverse neighbors. Gaylor said it was also a way to reach the growing number of Americans questioning religion.

MORE: Why more than a quarter of Arizonans are leaving religion behind

America is home to more Christians than any other country in the world, but that percentage is steadily declining, according to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center. The percentage of Americans polled in the study who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has climbed by more than 6 points, from 16.1 percent in 2007 to 22.8 percent in 2014.

There are also the foundation's lawsuits and letters.

In 2011, the foundation unsuccessfully sued then-Gov. Jan Brewer for proclamations in support of an Arizona Day of Prayer. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claimed that in declaring a state day of prayer, Brewer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

That clause prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, from unduly favoring one religion over another and from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.

Brewer’s attorneys maintained the Arizona Day of Prayer is voluntary. In 2013, the Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed the suit, saying the foundation and plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because they could not prove they’d been harmed by Brewer’s proclamation.

The complaint about Thunderbird Inn and the Gideon Bibles came from a campus employee who wanted to remain anonymous, Gaylor said. The foundation attorney’s letter stated that several other U.S. campuses, including Northern Illinois University and the University of Iowa, removed Bibles after the foundation contacted them over a complaint.

Dianne Post, 69, is a Phoenix resident, attorney and foundation member.

“I was a youth leader at two churches,” she said. “That’s how active I was.”

When she was 16, her pastor told the budding teenage theologian to read the Bible. That’s when Post first questioned her faith.

“I finished reading and I said, 'Well this is a load of hooey crap,' " she said.

After a few long talks with her pastor, Post made a decision.

“I never went to church again,” she said.

Post says she understands why the Thunderbird employee who made the complaint wants to remain unnamed. She’s seen discrimination against people, especially people who live in conservative states, who publicly say they don’t believe in God.

She carries a copy of her own scripture when she travels: Richard Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion." She wonders how people would feel if they went to their local hotel and found a text of the Quran or Dawkins’ book.

An attack on religion?

Brett Harvey, a Christian and senior attorney with the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defending Freedom, says he doesn’t believe people of faith are threatened by atheists or diversity of religious beliefs.

“The right answer is not to take away people’s options. Let people choose, let people find what gives them solace,” he said. “The answer is not less speech. It’s more speech.”

Harvey led a successful New York lawsuit that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and upheld the right to pray at public meetings so long as it does not discriminate against minority faiths nor coerce participation. The Alliance organization, founded in 1994, puts legal prowess behind its fights over defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, abortion and religious freedom, including the right to express faith on school campuses and in other public arenas.

Harvey said ASU failed its community when it agreed to remove the Bibles from the Thunderbird Inn. He sees the Freedom From Religion Foundation letters as a means to pressure public officials.

“They’re very effective at writing letters and threatening lawsuits, occasionally bringing some, and all too often public officials capitulate,” he said. “That’s why it’s a bullying tactic.”

Harvey said it’s easy to dismiss one letter in one city that leads to one less religious tradition as harmless.

"It's not a one-time deal. As soon as they get one person to capitulate, in their next letter they use it as proof. They say, ‘Look, here’s the ASU decision and they say we’re right.’ ”

A final note, in the nightstand drawer

Bjorem doesn’t think much about the Constitution when he’s raising money to buy Bibles for his community or handing them out to strangers. He does think about how the country is changing.

“From what I’ve seen in my lifetime … there seems to be a trend for our future that didn’t used to be there,” he said. “The separation of church and state has just gotten totally out of hand, if you ask me, from what our forefathers intended.”

Bjorem is celebrating his 80th birthday next month. On a recent Saturday, he stood with other Gideons, handing out Bibles to firefighters at local fire stations.

It’s a first for his chapter.

“I love to do it,” he said. “I’ll stick with it as long as I’m able.”

Back at the Thunderbird Inn, when you check in and find your room and open your nightstand drawer, you won't find a Gideon Bible. Instead, you will find a small piece of paper with a message.​

It tells travelers there is a collection of religious texts available for anyone who asks.

It's at the front desk.