Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ervice of the Devil.” Brother Andrew. claimed that he himself did not tell a lie. Instead, he said that when he traveled through a communist country, “I pray mighty hard that I don’t have to tell the truth either, and this way we manage!’ Perhaps Brother Andrew is personally able to maintain this fine distinction but the reports about how couriers actually conduct themselves makes the distinction between withholding the truth and lying quite fuzzy. Richard Wurmbrand, on the other hand, has taken the most forthright stance in favor of smuggling, regularly protesting about the niggling on ethical fine points. To such a person he offers his own brand of logic: “If de- ceit is wrong, to use a photograph smuggled out through deceit would be wrong too in this case.’’44 Wurmbrand’s own ethic is expressed in the following sentence: “To keep my own person ‘unstained’ and not to ‘smug- gle’ Bibles does not apply to this case when a whole people remain Assessment of East European Mission Societies 403 otherwise without the knowledge of Christ.’ Because the Soviet au- thorities prevent their own people from having access to the Bible, ‘ “they oblige me to smuggle. The sin is theirs.’’46 Generally speaking, there are very few mission organizations prepared to follow a policy of complete openness; they feel it is not practicable. In the end the debate over the ethics of smuggling boils down to the clash between American pragmatism and a New Testament ethic that proclaims: “We do not act with deceit’ (2 Cor. 4:2, GNB). The debate about smuggling has pushed into the background an issue which is at present more vital. How are the existing Bibles distributed? In the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, the evangelicals have received a dispropor- tionate number of Bibles. That is understandable, given their biblicism, but it is also due to the fact that the evangelically oriented East European missions have been partisan. That, too, is understandable, but a rethinking of the policy seems called for. Missions claim to lack contact with non-evan- gelicals but that-can be rectified with effort. Broader distribution would also be achieved if there would be less reliance on linguistically limited couriers who simply follow a drop-and-run technique, overload their handful of East European contacts with unwanted Bibles, and do not share in planned dis- tribution. 2. Dependency. It has become customary for Western Christians to bring presents when they visit Eastern Europe. Besides Bibles, this may in- clude small trinkets, cassette recordings, or even tape recorders. Russian Christians have discovered that a foreign friend can help them to be better dressed and to enjoy other simple pleasures which are denied to other So- viet citizens who have no foreign contacts. Some sensitive persons on both sides have begun to wonder whether this is the best way to build rela- tionships. Perhaps it is at least less demeaning than one