Friday 18 June 2010

Why remove Bibles, but not porn, from hotels?

This story is a few years old but I just heard it yesterday.

“...a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain saying the presence of the Christian Scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed. In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the Biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs? Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms. "Sweden is not as secular as we thought," says Christer Sturmark, head of Sweden's Humanist Association, a noisy assembly of nonbelievers to which the Bible-protesting hotel guest belongs.” (Andrew Higgins, 14 July, 2007)

2 comments:

  1. Hey Kent.

    Haven't commented yet (that I remember) - but wanted to say congrats on your new job & that it's good to see you in this space!

    ReplyDelete