The Chinese Communist government launched its biggest crackdown on Christians in years over the weekend, detaining dozens of pastors from “house churches,” including Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, the founder of one of China’s biggest evangelical churches.
“What just happened is part of a new wave of religious persecution this year,” said Sean Long, a U.S.-based pastor and spokesman for Jin’s Zion Church.
Long said almost 30 pastors and church members were detained across China in the crackdown, and about 20 of them remain in custody.
Pastor Jin has been detained on the charge of “illegal use of information networks.” His daughter Grace said he and the other detainees have not been allowed to meet with lawyers, and she feared her father would not receive the medicine he needs to treat his diabetes.
Jin, 56, converted to Christianity after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and founded Zion Church in 2007. His congregation grew dramatically during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic by offering sermons over the internet and by defying China’s brutal lockdowns to hold small services in person. He helped other pastors emulate his online model, and their congregations grew as well.
Zion is one of China’s underground churches or “house churches,” a movement that grew after the Chinese Communist Party took control of organized religion through a program known as “Sinicization.” Sinicized churches, temples, and mosques are controlled and licensed by the authoritarian regime in Beijing, and they are required to teach Communist Party doctrine as part of their services.
Most adherents of the five religions officially recognized by China — Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism — follow the path of least resistance and worship at state-sanctioned temples, mosques, and churches. Yet millions of Christians are willing to take the risk of belonging to unlicensed house churches.
The Communist government conducts periodic crackdowns on house churches. The last major one was in 2018, although 11 pastors from Jin’s Zion Church were detained this year and, in June, several members of another church were jailed for fraud. Jin himself has been harassed by security officials, placed under surveillance, and banned from leaving China to visit family in the United States.
According to Pastor Jin’s daughter, dozens of underground church leaders in provinces across China were either publicly arrested or quietly made to disappear over the weekend. The charges filed in most of their cases resemble those filed against Jin, accusing the detainees of distributing unlicensed religious material online.
In April, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs imposed new regulations on the online activity of religious clergy. Among other measures, the new regulations banned religious leaders from acting as online influencers, appearing in livestreams, hosting religious discussions in chat rooms, or posting videos of their sermons — in other words, all of the activities that helped house churches grow so rapidly during the pandemic.
The new regulations also forbid clergy from “inducing minors to believe in religion via the Internet” and bar them from using artificial intelligence tools (AI) to generate religious content.
Most ominously, the Chinese government promised to take action against “collusion with foreign forces” and “foreign religious infiltration activities.” The Chinese Communist Party is very keen on charging political dissidents with collusion, and such charges are very difficult to disprove.
China Aid founder Bob Fu told Fox News Digital on Saturday that China has reached the worst level of religious persecution in 40 years.”
“Faith is not a crime. Worship is not a crime. Prayer is not a crime,” Fu insisted. “The courage of China’s urban pastors and believers will be remembered in history as a living testimony that the light of Christ cannot be extinguished by tyranny.”
The U.S. government on Sunday called on China to immediately release the imprisoned church leaders.
“This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday.
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