Gideons International is an evangelical

Evangelicalism

Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...

 Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 organization dedicated to distributing copies of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 in over 94 languages and 194 countries of the world, most famously in hotel

Hotel

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...

 and motel

Motel

A motor hotel, or motel for short, is a hotel designed for motorists, and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles...

 rooms. The organization was founded in 1899 in Janesville, Wisconsin

Janesville, Wisconsin

Janesville is a city in southern Wisconsin, United States. It is the county seat of Rock County and the principal municipality of the Janesville, Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 62,998.-History:...

, as an early American parachurch organization

Parachurch organization

Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside of and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism, usually independent of church oversight. These bodies can be businesses, non-profit corporations, or private associations. Most parachurch...

 dedicated to Christian evangelism

Evangelism

Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....

. It began distributing free Bibles, the work it is chiefly known for, in 1908, when the first Bibles were placed in the rooms of the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana

Superior, Montana

Superior is a town in and the county seat of Mineral County, Montana, United States. The population was 893 at the 2000 census. Superior was named after its founders' hometown of Superior, Wisconsin in 1869...

.

Nearly 79 million Gideon Scriptures were given out in 2009.