Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Bible Ban Sparks Swedish Debate

Sweden has long had the reputation of being a super-secular nation. Less than 3% of the population attends church. But, within the last few days, it seems that God has made His presence known in Sweden.

It all began when a Swedish hotel guest checked into his room and found that the room was outfitted with a copy of the New Testament. He protested to the hotel chain. The chain ordered all Bibles removed from their hotels. A conservative bishop called for a boycott of the hotel chain. A former young radical who is now a devout Christian and host of a popular talk show denounced the hotel’s action in newspaper columns and on television. A young Evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking the hotel chain to justify its action in banning the Bible while running ads for pay porn.

The Scandic hotel chain bowed to the pressure. It put the Bible back into guest rooms.

All this has been going on in a nation that made history when it announced that it had “a third way” to go in the battle between socialism and capitalism. In essence, it proposed to accept the capitalist concepts of production and exchange while pressing for the socialist concept of national income distribution.

Sweden was doing very nicely until in the post-World War II era world manufacture went global. Products once “made in Sweden” were now being made in China and India for Swedish companies.

Sweden found itself in a hole. And, as the old saying goes, there are no atheists in a foxhole. When nothing seems to work, people turn to prayer.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.