FOX NEWS – Navy removes Gideon Bibles from guest rooms

Selected Article Excerpts:

• “The current direction is to remove all religious material from Navy Lodge guest rooms,” read an email to a Navy chaplain from The Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM). “For those Navy Lodges with religious materials currently in guest rooms, the Navy Lodge General Manager will contact the Installation Chaplain’s office who will provide guidance on the removal procedure disposition of these materials.”

• The Bibles had been placed in the rooms, free of charge, by Gideons International.An active duty service member contacted me and alerted me the Bibles were being taken out of hotel rooms and a lodge housekeeper told American Family Association the same thing.”They told us to put them in boxes where they would be taken to a donation center somewhere,” the housekeeper told AFA.

• Mikey Weinstein, the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me he was delighted to hear of the Navy’s directive. His organization has been trying for more than seven years to cleanse military hotel rooms of the Good Book.
  
  “We are happy to see the military doing that,” Weinstein said. “For years we’ve been telling them those Bibles are a violation of the Establishment Clause.” Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, blasted the Navy for removing the Bibles.”This is just one more assault by military leaders against anything Christian,” Crews told me. “It’s getting tiresome to see senior military leaders cave in to those who appear to be offended by Christians, by Christian symbols and now by the Bible itself.”

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