Evangelism Bottled Up, Wrapped in Red Tape

All the Rev. Craig Rice wants to accomplish is a little humanitarian outreach, but local and federal officials are not very happy about his idea of dumping 34,000 bottles containing religious messages into the Pacific Ocean.

The 40-year-old Lodi, Calif., leader of Current Evangelism Ministries has been practicing “bottle evangelism” for 18 years without any interference, but a recent article in a local newspaper caught the attention of some environmentally minded citizens who called the U.S. Coast Guard to protest the dumping.

Rice, who planned to take a 60-foot chartered fishing boat 200 miles out to sea from Sausalito last weekend, was visited Friday by local Coast Guard officers who told him he would be violating federal laws on ocean dumping if he did not get a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We think our civil liberties are being violated,” Rice said Monday. “They’re treating us like criminals, and for what reason? All we want to do is spread the word of God inside bottles.”

Rice said the bottles, which are stuffed with religious tracts and missionary material -- including some in Russian -- are intended mostly for inhabitants of small islands in the South Pacific that missionaries usually cannot reach.

Rice said he has collected “shoe boxes full” of replies from bottle finders all over the Pacific, from Malaysia to Papua New Guinea.

Good intentions aside, the EPA has told Rice that before he can dump his bottles, he must secure a permit for ocean dumping, a process that can take up to three years, a local EPA spokesman said.

In the meantime, Rice said the boat is being watched by Coast Guard officials in Petaluma and he does not plan to set sail until he finds out more about the permit.