The Smugglers of the Word

In the Soviet bloc, going the Gideons one better

All over the West, Bibles are as handy as the nearest paperback bookstore or hotel room. But for harassed Christians in the Soviet Union, a Bible can cost more than two weeks' wages on the black market. Things are almost as bad, and sometimes worse, in many satellite nations. To fill the deeply felt need of millions, at the height of the cold war freelance couriers began systematic efforts to smuggle books to Christians in Eastern Europe. Today Bible smuggling is carried on by a network of at least 40 Protestant organizations pursuing the world's most extraordinary missionary venture. Much support comes from U.S.-based organizations, notably L. Joe Bass's Underground Evangelism and Michael Wurmbrand's Jesus to the Communist World. At any one time, dozens of smugglers, both professionals and one-shot amateurs, may be crossing borders in Bible-bearing cars, vans or trains. The Bibles are given out free, paid for by Western contributors.

The political climate has changed considerably over the years, and there are those who question the usefulness of such trips now. Says General Secretary Robert Denny of the Baptist World Alliance: "There is no need to smuggle Bibles." Paul Hansen of the Lutheran World Federation, in a major attack on the smugglers, asserts that even if Bibles are sometimes needed, the very act of smuggling harms Soviet bloc churches.

The United Bible Societies reports that it has legally delivered 12 million Bibles or New Testaments to Eastern Europe since World War II. Many of these were later confiscated, however, or were simply unavailable to common people. TIME'S David Aikman, who has just completed a tour as Eastern Europe bureau chief, reports that a Christian's chances of buying a Bible openly are currently good in Poland, erratic in East Germany, difficult in Czechoslovakia and Hungary (where the purchaser's name may go directly into a government dossier), extremely difficult in Rumania, virtually impossible in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Buying a Bible is an out-and-out crime in Albania. Besides Bibles, the smugglers provide essential religious literature otherwise unobtainable.

The professional smugglers themselves, a courageous and self-reliant lot who often hold passports from non-NATO nations, regard such discussions as academic. They know the joy they stir. Holland's "Brother Andrew" of Open Doors, the man who pioneered smuggling in 1957, tells of running a vanload of Russian-language Bibles into Czechoslovakia in 1968, surrounded by invading Soviet tanks. Later he got a letter from a mother in the Soviet Union: "Thank you for giving our son a Bible when he was occupying Czechoslovakia."

One organization has a well-guarded auto body shop that builds secret compartments; with ingenuity, 500 pocket-size Bibles can be stuffed into a Volkswagen bug. Besides literature, the teams sometimes bring in clothing, radios, even debugging equipment to foil police surveillance.

Though most recipients are Protestants, a Roman Catholic parish in Poland was smuggled a new motor for its pipe organ.