BEIJING, China — The United States has called for the immediate release of more than 30 Christian leaders arrested in China over the weekend in what rights advocates are describing as the most extensive religious crackdown in decades.
The detained include several pastors and Jin Mingri, the founder of Beijing’s Zion Church, one of the country’s largest unregistered Christian networks.
According to ChinaAid, a US-based Christian advocacy group, police conducted overnight raids across multiple Chinese cities, targeting members of Zion Church and other underground congregations that operate outside the Communist Party’s official religious system.
Officers reportedly searched Jin’s home in the early hours of Saturday before taking him into custody. It remains unclear whether the detainees have been formally charged or where they are being held.
Zion Church, in a statement shared on social media, denounced the coordinated operation as a deliberate assault on faith.
“Such systematic persecution is not only an affront to the Church of God but also a public challenge to the international community,” the statement said.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains tight control over religion, requiring all churches to register under state-sanctioned bodies and to operate under government-approved pastors.
Independent “house churches,” like Zion, have long faced intimidation, raids, and closures for rejecting state interference.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio led international condemnation of the arrests, calling the detentions “a stark display of hostility toward Christians who refuse to let the Party dictate their faith.”
Former US officials Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo echoed the criticism, describing the move as part of a broader campaign to silence dissenting voices in China.
“This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches,” Rubio said in a statement on Sunday.
At a press briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian downplayed the issue, saying he was “not aware” of the arrests. He insisted that China “governs religious affairs in accordance with the law” and accused Washington of “interfering in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of religion.”
The arrests add to already strained US-China relations, with trade tensions escalating over tariffs and export restrictions. The crackdown also casts doubt over a planned meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping expected later this month in South Korea.
Analysts say the latest wave of detentions fits a familiar pattern under Xi’s leadership, which has seen tightening control over religion, media, and civil society.
At a 2016 national conference on religion, Xi called for efforts to “guide religious groups to love their country” and ensure faith serves “the interests of the Chinese nation.”
Authorities banned it in 2018 after Jin refused to install surveillance cameras inside the church premises — a move seen as an attempt to monitor sermons and congregants.
Jin’s family later fled to the United States, though he remained in China to lead his flock, despite repeated threats and travel bans.
ChinaAid described the coordinated arrests as “the most extensive and synchronized wave of persecution against Christians in more than 40 years,” drawing parallels to the Cultural Revolution era, when religious gatherings were violently suppressed.
“This campaign echoes the darkest days of the 1980s when urban churches first re-emerged from the Cultural Revolution,” said Bob Fu, ChinaAid’s founder.
In a letter seeking prayers, Jin’s wife Liu Chunli said her family was “filled with shock, grief, and righteous anger,” writing that her husband “simply did what any faithful pastor would do — he is innocent.”
Despite the crackdown, members of Zion Church and other underground congregations have vowed to continue meeting in small groups and broadcasting sermons online.
In a recent Zoom call, US-based pastor Sean Long asked Jin what he would do if arrested. Jin’s response was characteristically defiant:
“Hallelujah! For a new wave of revival will follow then.”
For China’s underground Christians, that revival may now be tested under some of the harshest religious repression in decades.
