The arrest of 30 Christians in China raises fears of greater repression

Last Friday, Grace Jin Drexel received a message from her father in China, prominent pastor Jin Mingri, telling her to pray for another missing pastor.

The text said the other pastor was detained during a visit to the southern city of Shenzhen.

“Shortly after that I got a call from my mother. She said she couldn’t get through to my father,” Ms Jean Drexel, who lives in the US, told the BBC.

Within hours, her family learned that Mr Jin had also been implicated in what activists described as China’s biggest arrest of Christians in decades.

Some now fear that last weekend’s roundup of 30 Christians linked to the Zion Church network founded by Mr Jin marks the start of what could be a wider crackdown on underground churches.

They point to new laws passed in China that appear to be aimed at curbing underground church activity and the increasing pressure authorities have placed on church members in recent months.

Although ruled by the atheist Chinese Communist Party, China has a significant Christian population. Government figures in recent years indicate that there are about 38 million Protestants and almost six million Catholics.

But these figures probably only count members of churches registered with the officially sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Three Self-Patriotic Movement, which emphasize loyalty to China and the Communist Party.

Human rights activists and scholars estimate that tens of millions more Chinese attend unregistered churches, also known as house churches, that do not follow state-sanctioned ideologies.

Many of these churches have been affected by the Chinese government’s attempts to increase its control over religious groups over the years. Church buildings were destroyed and crosses were removed from public space, while religious materials became more tightly controlled, with some Christian applications banned in China.

In 2005 and again in 2018, the government revised and tightened regulations on religious groups, while in 2016 Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for the “chitinization” of religion.

Underground churches such as Zion were particularly affected by the 2018 rules, which required government approval for public worship. Many were forced to stop public activities and turned to online services or simply closed down.

In the years that followed, several prominent pastors were arrested and convicted.

In recent months, there have been signs that Chinese authorities are tightening the screws again.

In May, pastor Gao Quanfu of the Light of Zion Church in Xi’an was detained on charges of “using superstitious activities to undermine law enforcement.” The following month, several members of the Linfen Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi were sentenced to years in prison for fraud, which human rights groups criticized as false convictions.

Then, in September, authorities announced a new online code of conduct for religious staff that only allows online preaching by licensed groups. This was widely seen as an attempt to limit the online services of underground churches.

Zion Church members have also faced increasing questioning by police officers in the past few months, Ms. Jean Drexel said.

Many in Zion saw the increased pressure as a prelude to a crackdown, but few expected it to be as large as it turned out to be, she said.

Last Friday and Saturday, Chinese authorities launched what was described as a large-scale crackdown in at least 10 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Besides Mr. Jin, who was taken from his main base in the city of Beihai in Guangxi province, they arrested other pastors, leaders and members of the congregation, according to the church.

The BBC has obtained a copy of what appears to be an official notice of Mr Jin’s arrest issued by the Beihai Public Security Bureau. It stated that Mr. Jin is currently being held in Beihai Number Two Prison and that he is suspected of “illegal use of information networks.”

The BBC has asked local authorities to confirm the detention.

Some of the arrested church members have since been released, but the majority are believed to still be in custody, with some held in the same prison as Mr Jin.

Corey Jackson, founder of the Christian advocacy group Luke Alliance, said the national scale and coordination of the arrests in China was unprecedented.

“We predict this is just the beginning of a bigger crackdown,” he said, adding that other underground churches in China are now bracing for arrests.

Another Christian advocacy group, Open Doors, said the arrests were significant. “Church Zion was very prominent and outspoken and may have reached the level of organization that the authorities are becoming concerned about organized social entities that they do not control,” a spokesman said.

He warned that “China’s policy of cracking down on house churches will continue” and that authorities may charge more church members with fraud and economic crimes “as a strategy of intimidation.”

Sean Long, a Zion Church pastor and US-based spokesman, said other churches would be attacked because there was “a new wave of religious persecution rapidly emerging in China”.

He called the latest arrests a “systematic roundup” aimed at “rooting out Zion” and cited the Chinese idiom “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys”.

“Zion is the chicken, we are the most powerful… this is to scare other Christians and the house churches in China.”

Asked by the BBC for a response, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said: “We would like to emphasize that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, all religious groups and religious activities must comply with China’s laws and regulations.”

Earlier this week, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said it “firmly opposes US interference in China’s internal affairs with so-called religious issues,” in response to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s condemnation of the Zion Church arrests.

The story of Zion begins with Jin Mingri, also known as Ezra Jin.

Born in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, he believed in the Chinese state growing up.

That changed in 1989 when, as a student at the prestigious Beijing University, he became involved in the pro-democracy movement that was eventually crushed in The Tiananmen Massacre.

Although he did not end up at Tiananmen Square on June 4, the events in the square changed his life. “It was a pivotal moment. All his life he had faith in the state. When that was betrayed, it shattered his whole worldview. It was a big turning-back-to-Jesus moment,” said Mrs. Jean Drexel.

At first, Mr. Jin pursued his new Christian faith in a church of the Three Selves. In 2002, he moved to the US with his wife and daughter to study at a seminary in California, where his two sons were born.

The family returned to China in 2007 so that Mr. Jin could continue his work. But he decided to start an independent church, Ms. Jin Drexel said, because he could no longer accept the doctrine of the three selves, which calls for allegiance to the Chinese state. “He couldn’t be a pastor there because the church was not godly…you can’t serve two masters.”

Zion began as a small house church in Beijing with only 20 followers. But over the years it expanded and began holding services in a large hall in an office building.

As influence grows, so does control. In 2018, Chinese authorities asked the church to install CCTV cameras in the building, saying it was for “security”.

When it fails, followers begin to face what church leaders say is harassment. Later that year, the church was closed.

A curfew was imposed on Mr. Jin, who was placed under strict surveillance. His family was able to go to the US as well as some other church members like Mr. Long.

Zion then turned to what Mr. Long called a “hybrid model,” where they would hold large online church services combined with small offline in-person meetings. The church has grown to about 100 branches in 40 cities in China and now has more than 10,000 followers.

Therefore, while the fate of Mr. Jin and the other arrested church members remains uncertain and the possibility of a wider crackdown looms, Mr. Long is confident that the underground churches in Zion and China will survive.

“Persecution cannot destroy the church,” he said. “If you look back at history, where there is repression, there is revival.”