US calls on China to release 30 leaders of influential underground church

The United States has requested the release of 30 leaders of one of China’s largest underground church networks, who were reportedly arrested over the weekend in overnight raids in various cities.

The list includes several pastors and Zion Church founder Jin Mingri, who was arrested Saturday morning after ten police officers searched his home, said ChinaAid, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

The Chinese Communist Party promotes atheism and tightly controls religion. Yet some Christian groups call the measure the most extensive crackdown on the faith in decades.

Christians have long been pressured to join only state-sanctioned churches, led by government-approved pastors, and to toe the party line.

It is unclear whether the detainees have been formally charged.

“Such systematic persecution is not only an affront to God’s Church but also a public challenge to the international community,” Zion Church said in a statement.

Urging China to release religious leaders, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Sunday that “this crackdown once again demonstrates how the CCP exercises its hostility toward Christians who reject the Party’s interference in their faith and choose to worship in unregistered house churches.”

Former US Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also issued statements on X condemning the arrests.

Asked about the arrests at a news conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said he was not aware of the case.

He added: “The Chinese government governs religious affairs in accordance with law and protects citizens’ religious freedom and normal religious activities. We firmly oppose US interference in China’s internal affairs on so-called religious issues.

That could pose a new source of friction in U.S.-China relations, with trade tensions once again escalating between the world’s two largest economies over tariffs and export controls.

Doubts already remain over whether the summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, which was due to take place in South Korea later this month, will go ahead.

Under Xi, Beijing has further cracked down on religious freedom, particularly against Christians and Muslims.

At a national conference on religion in 2016, he called on the party to “guide those (who are) religious to love their country, protect the unification of their motherland, and serve the overall interests of the Chinese nation.”

Despite this, there has been a growing movement of unregistered house churches in China.

Among them is Zion Church, which Mr. Jin founded in 2007 with just 20 people. Its network now numbers some 10,000 people in 40 cities across the country, making it one of the largest underground churches in China.

In September 2018, the Party officially banned the church after it resisted government pressure to install security cameras on its property in Beijing. Mr. Jin and several religious leaders were briefly detained.

Many of its branch congregations across the country have since been investigated and shut down. Mr. Jin’s family moved to the United States for safety reasons, while he remained in China to pastor his flock. The authorities banned him from leaving the country.

However, the Church continued to meet in small groups and share sermons online.

ChinaAid called the roundup of Christian leaders – which involved police in several cities – unprecedented and “the most extensive and coordinated wave of persecution” against Christians in more than four decades.

“This new national campaign echoes the darkest days of the 1980s, when urban churches re-emerged from the Cultural Revolution,” said ChinaAid founder Bob Fu, referring to a period of mass purges in the 1960s and 1970s that sparked violence and enormous upheaval across China.

In a letter seeking prayers, Mr. Jin’s wife, Liu Chunli, wrote that her heart is “filled with a mixture of shock, sorrow, sorrow, worry and righteous anger.”

Mr. Jin “simply (did) what any faithful pastor would do… He is innocent!” she wrote, adding that her family’s hopes of a reunion after more than seven years of separation have been dashed once again.

Several house churches in China have also issued statements calling for the release of those detained.

Sean Long, a U.S.-based Zion Church pastor, said Mr. Jin had prepared for a crackdown of this magnitude.

During a Zoom call a few weeks ago between the two pastors, Mr. Long asked what would happen if Mr. Jin was put in prison and all church leaders were detained.

Mr. Jin replied, “Hallelujah! Because a new wave of awakening will then follow!