//metrognome logo//

On the sidewalk outside Columbia University last week, a woman was doing brisk
 business signing up students for credit cards. Nearby, business was not so good for
 Ben Smucker.

Many sneered at the man in the suit. Others ran away as if Smucker was trying to
 place a piece of plutonium in their hands. Some took the man's offering, but most
 discarded it once they realized what it was. 


It ain't easy giving out Bibles in Sodom on the Hudson. 


"This is a pretty cold area," said Smucker, a Mennonite who had volunteered for the
 "New York City Bible Blitz" -- the Gideons' annual soul-saving mission. "And it is
 hard to get you New Yorkers to stop." Even for a free copy of the country's
 best-selling book.


Nothing -- not even open hostility -- stays these Gideons from their appointed
 rounds. For last week's "Blitz," 26 teams of four men spread out across the city,
 from Williamsbridge to Far Rockaway, from Bellerose to Ground Zero. Color-coded
 pushpins charted the teams' progress on a huge map at mission control: the Wyndham
 Hotel near LaGuardia Airport. 


For a week, a dozen of the hotel's parking spaces were taken up by boxes filled with
 hundreds of thousands of Bibles -- white ones for hospital workers, green for
 college kids, blue for Spanish-speakers, orange for high-school students, and a
 nifty brown snakeskin model for everyone else. 


Every night, the sunburned Gideons traded stories, both horror and inspirational,
 about handing out God's word in an icy town.


One man told of a recalcitrant Jewish nursing home manager.

"But when I told her, 'My savior was a Jew! I love all Jews!' she was nice," the
 Gideon said. "She even asked for extra Bibles for the workers on the night shift." 


Another man who had been assigned to New York University was hounded all day by "a
 Satanist." 


"I said, 'I'm praying for you,'" said the Gideon, Fred Eberle. "And he said, 'I'm
 praying against you!'" 


Success or failure breaks down along racial lines. Blacks and Hispanics almost
 always take The Book, while whites almost always do not. At Hostos College in the
 Bronx, a team of Gideons handed out 4,000 Bibles in an hour. The NYU team needed
 days.


Since placing the first Bible in a Wisconsin hotel room in 1908, the Gideons have
 handed out a billion copies of the Scriptures -- which cost $1.30 to print -- in
 over 170 countries.


They're not proselytizers (thank God). Their approach is merely to offer you a Bible
 and let you decide. But the Gideons are not without their detractors. There have
 been lawsuits and even campaigns by atheists to force hotels to turn down the free
 bibles. Some Jews complain about the Gideons' New Testament-only Bible.

And the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists even offers a list of
 ways to defile a Gideon Bible (number 3: "Keep a few handy in case you run out of
 toilet paper").

As Smucker continued his mission, he didn't realize that the man who'd just turned
 down a Bible was former New York Civil Liberties Union director Norman Siegel, who
 said he'd gladly defend the Gideons' right to hand out whatever they want.

Even a Bible with no Old Testament?

"For style, the Gideons get an A," Siegel said. "For content, no comment."

--30--


gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net