China Cracks Down HARD On Christian Churches… Again
It's the biggest wave of arrests of Christian leaders since 2018
In America, the killing of Charlie Kirk has awakened a fresh interest in Christian faith. In China, the government is working hard to suppress it.
There are two kinds of churches in China: the ones that operate with the approval of the Chinese Communist Party, and those who do not.
Churches (protestant and catholic) that work within the Communist party’s demands find themselves increasingly limited in what they can say and how they can conduct themselves. Many churches, for example, have been forced to take down depictions of a cross/crucifix, Jesus or various saints, and have been made to post images of Chairman Xi, and in some instances Chairman Mao. And in the 100th anniversary of Communism, were instructed to include the propaganda points from Xi’s speech in their sermons/teachings.
In the past, ClashDaily has documented the bulldozing of Churches, and the arrest of pastors. It is driven by a variation of xenophobia and justified by the goal of ‘sinicization‘ of China and its institutions.
It will come as no surprise that China has kicked off another wave of Christian persecution, arresting dozens of leaders of a rapidly-growing church that began in 2007 with a few dozen members and has since exploded into a network with over 10,000 viewers and over 5000 worshippers. They are traditionalists in their views, influenced by Reformed theology (think: RC Sproule or John Mac Arthur), and they are NOT part of the group who plays by the CCP’s rules on when and how they can worship the God of Heaven and Earth.
One of the big ‘infractions’? He refused a government order to install CCTV surveillance cameras in the sanctuary of their church.
[Would that more Western Christians had shown such moxy just a few short years ago, but I digress.]True to the pattern of China’s Communist Party trying to destroy that which it cannot control, recent weeks have seen a major push by Chinese authorities to shatter this network of believers.
Dozens of pastors from one of the largest underground churches in China have been detained. It is reportedly the biggest crackdown on Christians by the communist regime since 2018.
Chinese police have detained Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, the founder of Zion Church, at his home in the southern city of Beihai last Friday evening, his daughter Grace Jin told the media, from the U.S.
The long-time pastor has been under surveillance for years, and he is barred from leaving China.
The house church was started in 2007 and was previously shut down, but has still managed to grow into one of the largest congregations in China. Current estimates have the membership at about 5,000 regular worshippers across nearly 50 cities. — CBN
His daughter, now in the US, is making his story known to the American public.
A pastor of a prominent underground church in China was detained, according to his daughter, a church pastor and a group that monitors religion in the East Asian country.
Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of the Zion Church was detained at his home in Beihai in China’s southeast Guangxi province on Friday evening, along with dozens of other church leaders in Beijing and at least five other provinces across China. They may face charges of “illegal dissemination of religious content via the internet”, according to Sean Long, a Chinese Zion Church pastor currently studying in the United States.
“This is a very disturbing and distressing moment,” Long told The Associated Press by phone. “This is a brutal violation of freedom of religion, which is written into the Chinese constitution. We want our pastors to be released immediately.”
Long said he learned of the arrests from dozens of church leaders located in China who posted photos and videos of police entering church spaces in an online group chat.
[…] “We are witnessing the most extensive and coordinated wave of persecution against urban independent house churches in China in over four decades,” said Bob Fu, founder of U.S.-based religious group China Aid, which also reported the Zion Church arrests.
Grace said that her father, Pastor Jin, had brought his family over to the United States after authorities targeted Zion Church in 2018. But he decided to go back despite the risks. She hasn’t seen her father in six years, she said.
“He felt that as a pastor he had to be with the flock,” she said, fighting tears. “He had always been prepared for something like this.” —AP
The church is now ‘outlawed’ and he is ‘banned from preaching’.
Lately, the CCP has been cracking down on the spread of religion over the internet. In September, they issued a new Code of Conduct for Religious Clergy on the Internet, WSJ reports.
The code stipulates that preaching on the internet “may be done only through websites, applications, forums, etc. legally established by religious groups, religious schools, temples, monasteries, and churches that have obtained an ‘Internet Religious Information Services License.'” Another article of the code says that pastors “must not self-promote or use religious topics and content to attract attention and traffic.”
Jin is being held on suspicion of “illegal use of information networks,” a charge that carries the maximum prison sentence of seven years. — CBN
Of course, the fact that he won’t have access to a lawyer will make defending his case all the more difficult.
It’s not just him, either.
Rubio, as one might expect, has taken an interest in this issue, and has raised it directly on his social media… in his official capacity no less:
Of course, Iran tried to use persecution, arrests, and threats to stamp out Christian faith in their country too.
How well is that strategy playing out? Well, there may have been a few hundred Christians in all of Iran when the 1979 Islamic Revolution installed a Muslim Theocracy.
And now, after years of arrests and persecution? They’ve crushed the Christian faith so effectively that there are now estimated to be ‘only’ a million or two Christians flocking to underground churches, so that it’s the fastest-growing Christian community in the entire world, a community that is sending formerly-muslim missionaries to their hard-to-reach neigbors in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and so on.
Reports are that the growth was made possible, in party, by the persecution that was intended to break them.
Now, China is employing that same strategy.
And Christians…? You know what to do:
Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.
Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.
This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.
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