'Covert' evangelism is not the answer

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday August 23rd, 2008

I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about distributing Bibles in China; or rather, not being able to distribute Bibles.

An American Christian group was stopped at the airport when it tried to bring in more than 300 Bibles. The four Americans, led by Pat Klein of the Wyoming-based Vision Beyond Borders, have decided to camp out in the Kunming airport in southern China, hoping, I suppose, that the Bibles will be returned.

Klein said the Mandarin-language Bibles were printed in Indonesia, transferred to Thailand and flown to Kunming in duffel bags. They paid more than $350 in excess luggage fees in addition to the $200 per person for Chinese visas, plus their tickets.

First off, why are they trying to smuggle Bibles into China? The Chinese say they have printed 50 million Bibles in the last 32 years and are producing 800,000 a month for domestic consumption. The officially atheist Communist Party allows Bibles to be printed under its own supervision for use in state-sanctioned churches and some hotels.

There is a website called Bibles Unbound which allows users to actually give up their own hard earned cash to help "covertly" smuggle Bibles into China, Columbia, Egypt, and North Korea. I have also heard a lecture from the Gideon's that blew me away. It was about a "mission" to India where the parents did not want their kids to have Bibles, so the Gideon's went to the school where there were no parents and, viola. First off, evangelism by 'covert' means -- evangelism that purposefully ignores the wishes of parents and guardians -- evangelism that has to lie about the real purpose; is not the type of example that Jesus ever set for anyone. Secondly, it is arrogant beyond words. The concept that the only way people can have valid religious experience is through reading the Bible is just wrong. As is the concept that they have to give up their perfectly valid faith in order to convert to Christianity.

But just in case that doesn't convince you, how about this: Daniel Willis, who is the CEO of the New South Wales branch of the Bible Society, says that, "Organizations that appealed for funds to smuggle Bibles into China were wasting 90 per cent of their donor's money." You see, there is a company, called the Amity Printing Press in Nanjing that distributes most of the Mandarin translations of the Bible for China, and in fact, the world. These Bibles are then distributed through 55,000 churches and meeting points throughout the country.

Speaking in China, where he visited the press in Nanjing, Willis said, "If the western organizations that raised funds outside China for Bible smuggling used these same funds to buy Bibles from Amity, they would see a 90 per cent increase in the numbers of Bibles distributed. Whilst funding Bible smuggling trips might appeal to uninformed donors, if the funds spent on airfares and accommodation plus buying the Bibles were spent at Amity, where a complete Chinese language Bible costs around US$2, there would be tens of thousands more Bibles available in China."

What's worse, is that in most cases these organizations buy Bibles outside China that have been printed on the Amity Press -- 20 per cent of the press's production is exported -- and then spend more money on airfares to ship these same Bibles back to China.

But really, one of the reasons that Christian churches in North America are losing ground is that those who might be interested in what we have to say dismiss us out of hand because of the arrogant and underhanded way we treat the rest of the world.

Sure, we should shout the Good News from the rooftops -- but we should also be willing to listen to the Good News God gives to others to shout back at us.

It is time to let go of the "us" and "them" mentality and realize that if people of faith around the world worked together, we really could start changing things.