Anne van der Bijl has died at age 94. “Anne,” as in a Dutch variation of Andrew, was better known by his alias, Brother Andrew. I learned of his passing at the library in, of all things, the print edition of The Economist.
In my “born-again” period during college, I read Brother Andrew’s book God’s Smuggler. It’s his autobiographical account of taking Bibles into what were then the Communist countries of the Soviet Union.
There was also a comic book adaptation of God’s Smuggler, by Al Hartley. Somehow I missed seeing this Spire Comic at the time.
Hartley was a former Marvel artist, who had drawn Patsy Walker for Stan Lee.
The notice in The Economist missed an opportunity to point out that it was economics, not Brother Andrew’s efforts at planting copies of the Bible à la the Gideons, that contributed to the breakup the Soviet Union. The seeds of discontent grew from the public’s awareness of the worldly benefits of 1980’s secular consumerism — plentiful food, blue jeans, CD players, VCR’s, etc. China has since embraced the advantages of Capitalism, independent of Christianity or Democracy.
