Falcon Bluffs Middle School parent Laura Marrs believes there’s no good reason for a strange man to be hanging out near her 12-year-old daughter’s school bus to talk to her or hand her a Bible or anything else.
Marrs said she assumed there was a safety or buffer zone protecting her child from any solicitation as she left the Littleton school.
But there’s a strip of public sidewalk that middle schoolers must cross to get on their buses, and Thursday a member of The Gideons International, a 111-year-old Christian fellowship, was on that sidewalk with a box of the Good Book.
“Would you like a Bible?” 81-year-old Steedly Black asked kids.
He said he handed out 345. The school has 690 children.
“My daughter was creeped out by it,” Marrs said. “She’s been taught not to talk to strangers, not to accept things from strangers. We didn’t expect this at school.”
Falcon Bluffs principal Wendy Rubin said the sidewalk is public property, and the Jefferson County R-1 School District can’t tell people not to stand there or talk to students.
“I completely understand the parent’s point of view, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Rubin said. “We always do look out for the kids.
“We have 14 to 20 adults out there supervising them after school. The men don’t come on school grounds. They don’t say, ‘Take a Bible.’ They ask the kids if they want one. “
The Gideons have done this every year of the 10 that Rubin has been working at schools in the Littleton area, she said. She remembers being handed a Bible when she was a schoolchild. Her mother wasn’t happy about it either.
The Gideons, typically wearing sports coats and ties, first come to the school to tell officials they will be outside giving away Bibles, Rubin said. They leave a card if anyone wants to contact them.
“They are very polite,” Rubin said.
Others aren’t. In the past, people on the sidewalk near district schools have included abortion-rights protesters and the Westboro Baptist Church, known for its extreme protests.
Marrs said she understands that the Gideons behaved legally and that the school did what it could.
“From my logical brain, I get it,” Marrs said. “But from my ‘mom brain,’ I still don’t like it.”
Best known for disseminating Bibles in hotel rooms, the Gideons, affiliated with evangelical Protestant churches, distribute Bibles or New Testaments in the “designated traffic lanes of life,” which include middle and high schools.
Marrs said kids leaving school are a young, captive audience. “I know they followed all the rules at the school,” she said. “But my daughter is 12.”
The Gideons say they have distributed 1.6 billion Bibles in more than 90 languages in more than 190 countries. Black said that his group is having difficulty recruiting younger members. Most of his associates are in their 70s.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
