After months of rumours that the Chinese authorities would ban Bibles during the Beijing Olympics, it may now be taken as gospel that Christians will be free to practise their religion during the Games.

A British-based Christian charity has confirmed that 50,000 special bilingual booklets containing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will be made available in the Athletes' Village in Beijing and five other Olympic cities. Ten thousand Bibles and 30,000 New Testaments will also be printed.

It is the first time that Bibles have been distributed freely in China outside registered shops and with the full blessing of the Communist Party. Far from suppressing their distribution, the Beijing Olympic organising committee (Bocog) is putting its official stamp on the initiative by allowing the free use of its logo on the Scriptures.

During China's Cultural Revolution the Bible was banned and all copies were confiscated. Printing resumed in the late 1980s, aided by Bible Societies around the world, which supplied the paper and helped to manage the presses to keep the books affordable to people.

The Bible Society, in Swindon, Wiltshire, is funding the £200,000 cost of the Olympics Bibles, which will be printed by Amity Printing Press, at a £2.3 million facility opened in Nanjing last month. Amity, which turns out one Bible every second, produced its 50 millionth in September.

Christians can own Bibles, but they still suffer persecution in an officially secular society if they practise their religion outside the registered church, according to human rights activists. A report this month by Christian Solidarity Worldwide and China Aid Association detailed a crackdown on “house churches” and referred to a level of expulsion of foreign Christians “not seen since the 1950s”.

The Bible Society described the Chinese Government's co-operation in the distribution of the Bibles by branding it under Beijing 2008, as a breakthrough for the Church in China. James Catford, the chief executive, said: “This great sporting event presents a unique opportunity to make the life-changing message of the Bible available to thousands of athletes and visitors from all over China - and all over the world.”

Olympic athletes and visitors are permitted to take religious materials into the Village for their personal use. The International Olympic Committee provides temporary places of worship for five faiths: Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims.

But a crackdown on religious and political freedom in the run-up to the Games, which begin in 50 days, prompted fears that China would limit what could be taken into the country.

The international furore prompted Zhou Wenzhong, China's ambassador to the US, to write to a Republican senator that talk of a Bible ban was a fabrication. However, Beijing officials are unlikely to allow the distribution of mass religious literature deemed to be propaganda material, such as the Dalai Lama's teachings, which are banned in China.