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China’s brutal roundup of pastors linked to Zion Church is a wake-up call for the free world: Pastor Ezra (Jin Mingri) was detained in Beihai and roughly two dozen other church leaders remain in custody after coordinated raids across multiple cities. This is being described by observers as the biggest, most coordinated assault on underground Christian congregations in China since the last major purge in 2018, and Americans who cherish religious liberty should not sit silently.
Authorities have accused Pastor Jin and others of “illegal use of information networks,” a catch-all charge the regime now uses to criminalize online faith communities and silence pastors who refuse to bow to state control. Church spokespeople warn that Jin, who needs medication for diabetes, has not been allowed proper legal access and that many detained worshippers face an opaque legal fate under draconian rules.
This crackdown didn’t happen in a vacuum — Beijing has been tightening the screws on religion, rolling out new regulations that ban unauthorized online preaching and force uncompromising loyalty to party lines under the guise of “sinicization.” Zion Church’s dramatic growth during the pandemic through online services made it a target precisely because it proved independent religious communities can still thrive despite the regime’s hostility.
American voices are speaking up, rightly condemning the detentions and calling for the immediate release of those rounded up, while families in the U.S. plead for help and transparency about their loved ones’ safety. Pastor Jin’s daughter Grace Jin Drexel and her husband Bill Drexel have been public in raising the alarm and bringing this story onto U.S. airwaves, fighting for their father and for the principle that no government has the moral right to erase a people’s faith.
Let’s be blunt: the Chinese Communist Party’s pattern of repressing churches, censoring online worship, and weaponizing vague “information” laws against believers is not merely an internal human-rights issue — it is a global affront to the values Americans hold dear. Our policymakers must stop treating these violations as abstract reports and start treating them as strategic threats: targeted sanctions, visa restrictions for enforcers, and coordinated diplomatic pressure are basic tools we should be deploying now.
Patriots in this country ought to see this moment clearly. When a regime jails pastors for preaching, it reveals the true nature of the threat: an ideological adversary that fears spiritual conviction because faith builds communities that the party cannot control. We owe it to the persecuted — and to the future of liberty — to push harder politically and pastorally to defend believers in China and to hold Beijing accountable for every unjust arrest.
Americans of faith and conscience should join Grace and Bill in making a public stand: write to your representatives, demand hearings, and insist that our next moves on China include a human-rights-first posture. If we value freedom, we must not whisper when tyranny assaults worshippers — we must speak, act, and make clear that the United States will not shrug while churches are torn apart and pastors are dragged off for daring to preach.
