Earlier this year, courts in China issued multi-year prison sentences and heavy fines to believers accused of distributing Bibles outside state-approved channels, ruling that even legally printed Bibles become illegal once they are sold or shared outside government control. In Malaysia, four Finnish missionaries were deported for handing out booklets that included Bible verses, part of a wider series of arrests involving both foreigners and local Christians.
In several countries, simply owning or sharing a Bible can lead to arrest, imprisonment, or exile. Earlier this year, two Christian converts in Iran were sentenced in absentia to twelve years in prison for possessing and distributing Persian-language Bibles, which authorities classified as smuggled goods.
Their homes had been raided during a nationwide sweep targeting Christian literature, and they fled the country before sentencing. Iran has repeatedly arrested Christians for Scripture possession, with more than one hundred detained in 2023. Officials describe Bible distribution as a sensitive activity, and even recognized Christian minorities are warned not to preach to Muslims.
These cases illustrate how access to Scripture is treated as a criminal act in many parts of the world, forming part of the wider pattern of Bible bans and restrictions documented across eighty-eight countries.
Open Doors reports that hundreds of millions of Christians live in countries where owning or accessing a Bible is dangerous or impossible. In the top fifty countries on the 2025 World Watch List, more than three hundred million believers face very high or extreme persecution. The most dangerous nations include North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, where arrests, murders, and the destruction of churches are common. These same countries impose some of the strictest limits on Scripture, treating Bible possession as a criminal act.
Several nations enforce complete or near-complete bans, while others allow Bibles only under narrow state-controlled conditions. North Korea, Afghanistan, and Yemen bar most Christians from owning or reading Scripture, and even a foreign visitor who leaves behind a Bible risks arrest. Governments such as those in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, China, Iran, and Brunei permit limited access but impose strict rules on language, distribution, and public use. In many of these places, Christians rely on scarce underground copies or digital versions, knowing that even private possession can lead to imprisonment, torture, or expulsion.
Jos Snope, CEO and president of Bible League International, said in an interview with The Gateway Pundit, “Over a hundred million Christians around these eighty-eight countries are waiting for the Word of God. They need it. They don’t have it.” He added that four countries each have shortages exceeding ten million: India, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.
Bible League International is a steering partner for the Bible Access List initiative, a global project developed by the Bible Access Initiative to identify where Scripture is most difficult to obtain and where shortages are most severe.
The 2025 edition covers eighty-eight countries and provides shortage estimates for seventy-six of them. Its research ranks nations by legal restrictions, ownership levels, expressed demand, translation gaps, distribution challenges, and affordability.
Snope explained that it may be difficult for people in the West to grasp how severe the shortage of Bibles is in many countries. “Because, you know, if you live in a country where we live, we have ten, sometimes even twenty Bibles on the shelf. We don’t even think about these things.”
He added, “If you look at the access list, you see different countries ranked differently than the need list and the shortage list. And one of the reasons behind that is that in a lot of the countries where the restrictions are absolutely the highest, you cannot print in the country, you cannot distribute in the country, and sometimes you cannot even warehouse in the country.”
In some countries Scripture can be distributed in one language but not in another. In Malaysia, for example, restrictions are far lighter for Bibles printed in Chinese or English than in Malay, the language spoken by the Muslim majority. A similar pattern exists in Iraq and Syria, where Christian materials printed in English or Assyrian face less government scrutiny than materials printed in Arabic, which would make them accessible to non-Christians.
The research produced some unexpected findings. Snope noted that “often the countries where the restrictions are the highest, they’re actually low on the shortage list, just because the number of Christians is very low.” Iraq and Syria are examples. Their Christian communities are small, and most believers who want a Bible already have one or can obtain one.
By contrast, the four countries with the greatest need all have large Christian populations. “And the restrictions are fairly open. I mean, there are some, but India is an example where the restrictions are actually quite high at the moment. But if you take the Democratic Republic of Congo, the restrictions are not in the import or in the export.”
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The main barrier in many of these countries is economic. As Snope explained, “you could almost say, if you invest more money in the Congo, you can actually solve the problem.” In other places, the lack of Bible access comes from “both governmental restrictions and hardship, as well as poverty.” Many people earn barely enough through daily labor to feed themselves and return to work the next day. “There’s absolutely nothing to spend, and the combination of that makes the Bible unavailable.”
Another economic factor is the difficulty of printing Bibles in minority languages. Bible printing companies rely on large production runs and are less willing to print in languages spoken by only a few thousand people. Language diversity alone creates enormous challenges. Papua New Guinea has more than 840 languages. Indonesia has roughly 710 languages spread across an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands. Nigeria has about 530, and India has around 450 to 460. Even Burma, with a population of only fifty-five million, has more than one hundred languages.
Many people assume that with the Bible now readily available online, the problem would be solved. However, online Bibles are not available in every language, and many people do not have smartphones or access to the internet. Government restrictions and censorship also limit online access. As Snope said, “You cannot go to the internet to do it because the internet is monitored and restricted.” China is a clear example. Citizens’ browsing history is monitored and can be used against them, and their social credit score can be downgraded if they are found to have accessed Christian materials online.
Snope summed up the extent of need in some countries: “Churches don’t have Bibles. You sometimes see churches where maybe the pastor has a Bible, and that’s it. So, it’s often a combination of these factors, and it just breaks my heart when you see that.”
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