The Trump administration has urgently called for the release of a Chinese underground church pastor who has been detained.
Pastor Jin Mingri, also known as Ezra Jin, was taken into custody last Friday at his residence in Beihai, Guangxi Province, according to his daughter, who is a U.S. citizen.
Reports indicated that around 30 other individuals associated with Zion Church had either been detained or went missing across several Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, according to The New York Times.
In response, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a statement criticizing the arrests and urging the Chinese government to permit people of all faiths, particularly those involved in house churches, to worship freely without fear of punishment.
“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,” Rubio said in the statement.
Pastor Jin Mingri, who is 56 years old, founded Zion Church, which is a non-denominational Evangelical community that began in 2007. Over the years, it expanded into one of the largest underground churches in China.
He joined pro-democracy protests during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, converted to Christianity shortly afterward, and later graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary in California.
Zion Church was shut down officially in 2018 after authorities raided its church in Beijing, which led the church to shift its worship services online and to grow its network throughout China. According to The Wall Street Journal, Zion’s online services have attracted as many as 10,000 participants through platforms such as Zoom, YouTube, and WeChat.
Grace Jin Drexel, Jin’s daughter and a staff member in the U.S. Senate residing in Washington, said her father maintained leadership of the church remotely despite constant surveillance and restrictions on leaving China.
Pastor Jin's wife, Chunli Liu, is a Chinese national living in the U.S. since 2018, with their three children, all of whom hold American citizenship. “They (China authorities) are afraid of my husband’s influence,” Liu stated in a video interview.
Grace explained that her father had recently attempted to visit the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to renew his visa but was intercepted by authorities, taken to the airport, and compelled to leave the city.
Since his detention, the family has had no contact with Jin, and it remains uncertain whether he has been formally charged with any crime.
Concern grew on Sunday as members of the church community shared news about multiple detentions and disappearances, with some fearing the entire leadership might soon be incarcerated, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bob Fu, who is the founder of ChinaAid, described these events as “the most extensive and coordinated wave of persecution” against underground churches in China in over four decades.
Citing the severity of the crackdown, Corey Jackson of Luke Alliance, a group advocating for persecuted Christians, called this the sweep the most significant since 2018 and warned that further deterioration of the situation could be imminent.
