Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri (pictured above) and 30 members of Beijing Zion Church were arrested last October in one of China's largest crackdowns on a single church in decades, raising concerns about an escalation in the government’s curtailment of religious freedom.
Authorities reportedly shut down his church's Beijing premises in 2018 after it refused government demands to install surveillance equipment. The congregation then moved to online gatherings, drawing as many as 10,000 participants through Zoom, YouTube and WeChat.
When President Donald Trump made a state visit to China in November, he brought Pastor Jin's name up in his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi told Trump he would see what he could do, but no one thought it would come to much.
"It honestly seemed like a bit of a brush-off and one of those things you say just to make something go away," Nettleton tells AFN. "But Pastor Ezra Jin has now been released and is back home with his family."
Jin was released on July 4 and flown to the U.S. in what Chinese officials call a goodwill gesture on the occasion of America's 250th birthday. The Associated Press reports that Jin is now with his family, who have thanked Trump for intervening and expressed hope that the move signals a positive turn for people of faith in China and for relations between the two nations.
Nettleton commends Trump for being mindful of the pastor, but he says other individuals from Zion Church are still being held.
"Eight staff members at the church, eight leaders from Zion Church are still in prison," he notes. "We don't know how long that will last; we don't know exactly what to expect from here."
As Chinese authorities have pushed to "Sinicize" religion by demanding loyalty to the Communist Party, Nettleton hopes the case of Zion Church "raises the profile of other prisoners of conscience, other Christians who are in prison."
