The authorities in China have detained the pastor of one of the country’s most prominent underground churches, along with dozens of other people affiliated with his church, according to the pastor’s family and members of the church, prompting worries about a renewed crackdown on religion.
The pastor, Jin Mingri, who also goes by the name Ezra, founded Beijing Zion Church in 2007. It grew into one of the country’s largest unofficial congregations, with several satellite campuses and over 1,000 people attending its weekend services.
Mr. Jin, 56, was detained on Friday at his home in the city of Beihai in Guangxi Province, according to his daughter, Grace Jin, who lives in the United States. Around the same time, nearly 30 other Zion Church pastors or workers were taken into custody or went missing around the country, including in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities, she said.
Calls to the Beihai police rang unanswered on Sunday.
Ms. Jin said her family had not been able to reach her father but that they had heard from other church members, some of whom were released after their initial detentions, that he was being accused of illegal dissemination of religious information.
The Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but in practice, the Chinese Communist Party permits only tightly controlled, state-approved congregations to operate openly. Still, it is estimated that tens of millions of Chinese Christians worship in underground churches, also called house churches.
Under China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, persecution of those unofficial congregations has increased, alongside a more general crackdown on religion in general, especially Islam. In 2018, a nationwide crackdown led to the closure of several prominent house churches, including Beijing Zion. The government regularly encourages ordinary Chinese to report unsanctioned religious gatherings, which it sometimes calls cults, to the police.
After 2018, Mr. Jin was subjected to frequent surveillance and harassment, his daughter said, and forced to leave Beijing. He was also barred from leaving China to visit his family members, who left the country in 2018. Ms. Jin, her mother and her two younger brothers now live in the United States.
But Mr. Jin continued to lead Zion by convening smaller, more scattered gatherings, as well as sharing videos of sermons online, Ms. Jin said. During the coronavirus pandemic, when many other churches stopped operating, Zion grew rapidly, drawing audiences of sometimes 10,000 people across the country on platforms including Zoom, YouTube and WeChat, Ms. Jin said.
In recent months, though, many at Zion began to worry that another crackdown was imminent. Surveillance on Mr. Jin seemed to have ramped up, Ms. Jin said. In September, the government issued new regulations limiting religious activity online to officially registered channels.
Mr. Jin had also suggested to the state security officers monitoring him that he might retire from Zion so that he could join his family, Ms. Jin said. But she said the officers refused to let him leave.
“After this kind of posturing, it seemed like something big was going to happen again,” Ms. Jin said. “We just didn’t know when or to what extent. But I also feel like my dad is always the optimist.”
She added, “He is sort of like, ‘Well I can’t live in fear every day, so I’m just going to continue on with what I need to do.’”
After news of Mr. Jin’s arrest emerged, Mike Pence, the former vice president, called on the Chinese government to release him, in a post on X.
Corey Jackson, the founder of Luke Alliance, a U.S.-based group that advocates for persecuted Christians in China, said that the detentions were “without a doubt” the biggest crackdown on Christianity in China since 2018.
“If this is the first move, then it could be far worse down the line,” he said. But he also said he expected Chinese Christians to keep trying to gather.
“The Chinese church is probably stronger than the world realizes, maybe stronger than the Communist Party realizes,” he said. “And I think that’s part of the problem the Communist Party is facing.”
Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people.
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