The Chinese Communist Party often detains people without warning and without notifying family members or others. The perpetrators of Party’s latest crackdown against religious practice in the People’s Republic of China have been almost this mute, except that detainees like Pastor Ezra Jin and others associated with the Zion Church have been presented with a “detention slip.”
His daughter, Grace Jin, said that they are facing charges “something like online dissemination of religious materials, but they have not given any paperwork out to anyone physically. But they’ve shown the detention slip, and that’s what it says on most people’s detention [slips]” (Fox News, October 11, 2025).
The Associated Press cites a pastor of Zion Church who, like Grace Jin, currently resides in the United States.
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.
Zion Church is among the largest so-called underground or house churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities. They defy Chinese government restrictions requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.
For many years, including under Xi Jinping, CCP officials have been struggling to “Sinicize” religion by in effect making all religious institutions an adjunct of the Party and requiring priests, pastors, and monks to parrot Party ideology. The registered congregations are the ones that submit to this Sinicization. Others try to carry on without CCP approval despite its harassment and despite the risk of arrest.
Jin (shown above) brought his family to the United States after Zion Church and other underground churches were targeted in 2018. But he returned to China himself. “He felt that as a pastor he had to be with the flock,” his daughter says. “He had always been prepared for something like this.”
Also see:
Taipei Times: “Beijing officials shut down major Protestant church” (September 11, 2018)
“Jin was among about 200 pastors from underground churches who put their name to a petition complaining of ‘assault and obstruction’ by the government—including the tearing down of crosses—since new religious regulations came into effect in February.”
