via Christian Today, in a very fair and insightful article.
Amity Press celebrates the 80 millionth Bible printed on its presses and reports it is printing 1 million Bibles per month. It’s a huge number. They go on to report that a quarter of the Bibles printed in the world today are actually made in China.
But then there’s this interesting twist. In addition to Bibles in Chinese, Amity also publishes Scripture in English, French, Spanish and Braille, and has exported more than 26 million Bibles — a third of its total publication.
In other words, the 80 million Bibles Amity has printed are not all Chinese. Only 54 million of them are.
Most estimates of the total number of Christians in China are in the vicinity of 100 million. (Paul Hattaway’s numbers I think are the best in this regard. OW is close to the same numbers so in basic agreement.)
And then there is the point that my insightful Heidi raised: how many Chinese people per Bible are there? Because Bibles aren’t just for Chinese Christians. They are also given away during evangelism. And 54 million Bibles is a pittance when compared to 1.2 billion Chinese.
It’s great that Amity’s printed 54 million Chinese Bibles. But it’s nowhere near enough. As with everything, more is needed.
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