Ezra Jin, founder and pastor of Zion Church, and more than 30 of his associates and church staff were detained in China on Oct. 10. They have been charged but not yet sentenced for their alleged crimes. Time is running out before sentencing occurs, after which it will be much harder to obtain their releases.
Zion Church is a large underground house church with congregations in 40 cities across China. According to Pastor Ezra Jin’s daughter and son-in-law, Grace Jin Drexel and Bill Drexel, the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of Zion Church’s meeting space in 2018 pushed the church “to develop the online hybrid model that proved so successful” during China’s severe COVID-19 lockdown and in the years since. At times, prayer groups led by Pastor Jin have reached 10,000 people.
Some of the Zion Church employees are now facing criminal charges, including for “illegal dissemination of religious information via the internet.”
Witnesses to the arrests claimed police had a wanted list and were violent. A pastor and spokesman for Zion Church, Sean Long, said that police even forcefully separated one female pastor from her newborn baby.
Pastor Jin’s entire nuclear family, including his wife and three children, is U.S.-based, and his children are all American citizens. Thus, Pastor Jin’s arrest is a national security concern for the United States government.
China’s constitution technically allows for freedom of religion; it states that its citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief” and that “no state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion, or discriminate against citizens for their beliefs.” However, the Chinese Communist Party is officially atheist and is highly discriminatory against freedom of religion.
The CCP is notorious for its acts of religious persecution. In December 2018, for example, CCP authorities detained Wang Yi, pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church and a former human rights attorney, in conjunction with 100 members of his congregation during a series of police raids. They were targeted for allegedly failing to register their church with the Chinese authorities. Wang remains in prison and reportedly has been held in solitary confinement and been denied sufficient medical care.
Despite the extremely somber nature of that case, the arrests of Pastor Jin and his associates are still the largest crackdown on the independent Christian community in China since the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s.
This case is not only an assault on religious freedom but also an act of political imprisonment, two forms of repression that often converge. Authoritarian regimes target faith leaders for what they believe as well as for the civic power their communities represent.
At the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Awards held in early November, Grace Jin Drexel spoke movingly about her father’s detention and the suffering of Zion Church’s members, urging the world not to look away.
Introducing Grace at the awards, Board Chairman and former Rep. Peter Roskam reflected that the freedom to worship, America’s first freedom, was born of a “scandalous” conviction: that allegiance to God transcends any earthly power. “That’s exactly what Pastor Jin has done,” Roskam said. “He has told the Chinese Communist Party, ‘You are not my emperor. My Savior is my emperor, and it is Him alone I serve.’ Our responsibility tonight is to make sure we give voice to people like Pastor Jin and others who are suffering.”
CHRISTIAN LEADERS’ TAKE ON GEN Z STAMPEDING BACK TO CHURCH
Washington already has the tools to act. One way the U.S. could pursue justice in this case is by imposing Magnitsky sanctions on the jailers involved, from Secretary of the CCP’s Secretariat Li Ganjie to Chinese Minister of Justice He Rong, Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. This would hold them accountable for their human rights abuses and arbitrary detention of the Zion Church members.
Washington must act swiftly to free these members of Zion Church, including using all available diplomatic and economic levers against Beijing to demand their release. Time is of the essence, and the sooner China releases these Christians, the better it will be for international religious freedom and U.S. national security.
Alexis Mrachek is the senior program manager of the Human Rights & Freedom Program at the McCain Institute. Pedro Pizano is the director of the John McCain Freedom for Political Prisoners Initiative at the McCain Institute.