GIDEONS - INTREPID SERVANTS OF THE WORD

Anyone with an image in their mind of international Bible distributors The Gideons as a bunch of cheesy Bible bashers could not be more wrong. These gentlemen are intrepid servants of Christ and in a Western context courageous counter-cultural rebels in the right sense.

At a lunch hosted by their South Sheffield branch yesterday, Cranmer's Curate heard an account from a British Gideon of his labours distributing Bibles in Swahili to school children in Tanzania. He told how when he signed the visitors' book after a journey to a school in a very remote place the last signature was four years previously.

The warm welcome the Gideons received in Tanzania contrasted sharply with their reception at the Flemish university in Belgium. A lecturer called the police to prevent them distributing the New Testament to students on the pavement outside the campus. The speaker told how the indignant academic was unable to answer when asked: 'What is wrong with students at the Flemish university being encouraged to think for themselves?'

A computer lecturer in his day-job, this gentleman's international labours for the cause of Christ are entirely unpaid.

In the post-modern mind, the masculinity of the Gideons would be seen as a disadvantage. In fact, the Gideons' willingness to stand up for their Christian convictions and take risks to get the Word of God to the world is a feature of the pre-1960s male. Their godly masculinity is thus what makes them so effective in serving the Word.

Certainly, it would be a brave man who would attempt to distribute Bibles in the British school run by the headmistress who declared on national radio that mentioning Jesus in assemblies is a no-no because it would exclude some of her students.

Cranmer's Curate thanks the editor of the Sheffield Telegraph, Mr David Todd, very much indeed for publishing a clarification in this week's issue after cc was grossly misrepresented in a letter last week.