Religion: The Smugglers of the Word

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In the Soviet Union, the toughest target, 22 Bible-bearing vehicles were confiscated in 1977 alone. Border guards now come armed with probing tools and auto owners' manuals. Some border checkpoints are even equipped with terminals to Western-made computer systems to check the record of any driver they stop. Czechoslovak guards in 1977 barred the entry of an American woman when the computer informed them that she had been thrown out of the Soviet Union two years before for Bible smuggling. Most people caught in the act are simply questioned for a few hours and then refused entry. The longest prison term to date was 3½ years, given by Czechoslovakia.

Top organizers rarely act as couriers.

In 1977 Sweden's Slavic Mission made the mistake of sending two well-informed officials into the Soviet Union. Police held them for nearly six months' interrogation and extracted damaging details on a number of networks, as well as plans to have young, Bible-toting Christians blitz the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Most smugglers are ordinary businessmen or tourists on one-time trips.

Usually they attend a crash course in how to handle themselves. In summer, hundreds of vacationing college kids turn up and volunteer. Those "after adventure" are turned down. So is anybody with a hippie look-customs officials are bound to check them for nonreligious contraband such as drugs or diamonds.

What about the deceit and lawbreaking such enterprise requires? Brother Andrew replies that God's command to evangelize takes precedence over Marxist law. But he insists that he has never lied at the border. "If they ask me, 'Do you have any Bibles?' I'll just smile and say, 'Yes, a lot!' But I pray hard before I go that they won't ask me that question."

Ironically, the long-term effectiveness of the Bible-smuggling operations now seems threatened by scandal in the U.S. Underground Evangelism and Jesus to the Communist World have lately struggled in a bitter and squalid feud run out of their California headquarters. The battle involves a $1.5 million defamation suit rising from charges and countercharges made by Wurmbrand about Bass's personal behavior, and it threatens to spread to questions about Bass's ways of accounting for some of the $8.7 million a year his group raises. The situation could take years to untangle. The two organizations together depend on contributions and account for nearly $17 million of the estimated $30 million a year raised for such ventures, and their embarrassing fight could do more harm to the program than anything Communist police and customs officers might dream up.