A couple of months after the crackdowns on Zion Church Beijing began in 2018, the church published a video on YouTube of pastors gathered together to sing a song.
The lyrics came from a Dietrich Bonhoeffer poem called “By Kindly Powers,” written in his final letter to his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer in December, 1944 as he sat in a dungeon beneath the Gestapo’s Berlin headquarters. He had returned to Germany in 1939 to lead his clandestine seminary in Finkenwalde, after a brief and reluctant time in the United States.
“And should You proffer us the heavy cup,” the pastors sing, “of bitter grief, filled up unto the brim, in thanks we take it without any trembling, received as from Your good and dearest hand.”
The Mass Arrests
The video has grown in significance in the following weeks as the Chinese Communist Party has ramped up its crackdown on Christians in the country.
“It’s really hard to watch now,” Grace Jin Drexel, whose father Ezra Jin leads Zion Church, told IW Features. “Almost all of the people in that video have been arrested.” That includes her father.
On October 10, Grace woke up to a text from her father, the head pastor of the Zion Church in China, one of China’s most prominent underground Christian communities. He had sent her an image of a public prayer letter from Zion Church asking for prayers for Zion Pastor Wang Lin, who had been detained overnight by Chinese police. That was just a day before the Chinese Communist Party conducted the largest government crackdown on the underground Christian church since 2018.
When she received that text, Grace said she “felt an uneasiness in my stomach. But growing up as the daughter of a prominent pastor in China, I carried that feeling almost every day. I knew the government always tried to harass Christians, intimidate them into giving up their faith, and accept the doctrine of the Chinese Communist Party instead.”
Grace kept Pastor Wang in her prayers as she went about her morning with her two small children, preparing to head to work in Washington, D.C.
By 8 a.m., her mother called—she hadn’t heard from Grace’s father in several hours.
By the end of the day, the family had confirmation: Ezra Jin had been spotted in a temporary holding facility, sitting alone on a hard concrete bench in prison garb, in handcuffs.
Stories of similar arrests came out over the next three days as Zion Church wrestled with the scope of the raids.
It all began on October 9, when Lily Du, another pastor at Zion Church, noticed something amiss when she saw Ezra Jin’s ominous message in the church group chat: “Who is with Pastor Wang Lin?”
That evening, Du learned that Pastor Wang Lin had been arrested at Shenzhen Bao’an Airport.
The following night, between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., Beihai police carried out coordinated raids against Zion Church members in Beijing. Among those detained were Pastor Gao Yingjia, Pastor Wang Cong, Pastor Sun Cong, Preacher Misha, and Sister Xiaoyu. Their homes were searched, and electronic devices, including computers and phones, were confiscated.
Cherie Geng, wife of Pastor Gao Yingjia, was at a friend’s house with her husband and son when the raids began.
“Around 2 a.m., people claiming to be Beihai police knocked on the door and took my husband,” she told IW Features. “They didn’t leave any documents or explain where he was being taken. Before they left, I heard they would take my husband to our house and search for certain items.”
Additional arrests occurred across multiple provinces. Preacher Zhan Ge was taken in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, and transported to Beihai for overnight detention. Brother Liu Jiang was arrested at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport.
On the morning of October 11, Pastor Liu Zhenbin was arrested in Huangdao, Shandong, and Pastor Mu Chenglin was detained in Chengdu. Family members reported that officers from the Yinhai District Police Station in Beihai carried out the detentions, and had been shown warrants for arrest issued on September 26, 2025.
“Pastor Jin, Pastor Yin, and his wife, as well as the brothers and sisters in Beihai, were all blocked inside the buildings where they lived and were checked one by one by their ID cards,” said Pastor Lily Du. “Simultaneously, pastors and co-workers in Beijing, Shandong, Chengdu, Jiaxing, Shanghai, and other locations were arrested.”
It took a full three days for the church to realize the full scope of the arrests: 28 pastors, staff, and church members had been detained across several cities. The simultaneous raids, confiscation of devices, and targeting of digital communications suggest a deliberate effort to dismantle Zion Church’s national network and online presence. Six individuals were later released.
Then, on October 17, another Zion Church elder was “disappeared,” according to Grace Jin Drexel.
“We’ve now confirmed that he, too, is being held with the others in the detention center,” she said.
That brings the total to 23 people detained across two detention centers in Beihai.
“Many of the families of the detained pastors and church members have now traveled to Beihai to be close to their loved ones,” she said. “Since the arrests took place across multiple provinces in China, most of these families are not originally from Beihai.”
However, none of them have been allowed to see the detainees yet—family visits are not being permitted.
According to Grace Jin Drexel, families have begun receiving official detention notices, confirming that nearly all of the detainees have now been formally charged with “illegally disseminating religious information online.” The charges stem from new regulations introduced by the CCP in September, which forbid “religious professionals” from using the internet to evangelize or organize. Under these rules, any religious content shared online must first be approved through a government-run portal.
In practice, that means any unapproved religious message—something as simple as texting a friend “Amen”—could technically be considered illegal religious dissemination, according to Grace Jin Drexel.
The intent is clear: to bring all speech, especially religious expression, under state control.
Faith Under the Party’s Watch
This new regulation is the latest chapter in the nearly century-long story of the persecution of the Christian Church under the jackboot of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1954, the government officially recognized five religions (Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, and Taoism) through the establishment of state-sanctioned religious organizations, such as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants. In these official churches, which remain active today, every aspect of church life—what is preached, how many baptisms take place, what small groups can meet, and so on—has to be approved by the CCP.
During Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1977, believers suffered severely. Churches were closed or destroyed, religious materials like Bibles were confiscated or burned, and clergy and laypeople were imprisoned and tortured. Many were forced into “struggle sessions” (public humiliation rituals aimed at reeducation and punishment) or labor camps and cut off from society. Only Three Self churches were permitted to practice—and only when they served Party control.
Lore holds that Mao and his widow, confident they’d stamped out the last embers of the faith, declared that there were “no Christians left in China.”
They were wrong. The underground church survived, kindled in hidden gatherings and private homes in the countryside where believers prayed in whispers.
Then, in the early 2000s, the urban church movement emerged. Many began gathering openly in the cities, preaching boldly in office buildings, conference spaces, and rented halls.
“They weren’t rebelling politically,” said Grace Jin Drexel. “They were simply declaring that Christ is the true center of the church, not the government or any earthly ruler who claims ultimate authority.”
But the CCP considered any other authority to be a threat, and did its best to crush the Christian spirit. Take, for example, Shouwang Church in Beijing in the early 2000s. When the church sought government registration—not to align with the Chinese Communist Party, but simply to gain legal recognition—its attempt was swiftly crushed. Authorities persecuted the congregation and forced the church to close in 2019, sending a clear message: any true independence from state control would not be tolerated.
David and Goliath: Zion Church’s Rise
Zion Church emerged from that underground movement, a flower bursting through concrete.
Its founder, Ezra Jin, was a college student during the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989.
“To cope [with the CCP’s rise], students played cards in their rooms and went through the motions of campus life,” Grace Jin Drexel wrote for the Free Press. “But my dad walked around the halls of Beijing University, the place he dreamed of attending while growing up in a poor, rural community, and he felt an emptiness.”
It was in the depths of this search for meaning that he found Christ.
Ezra pursued theological studies and became a pastor within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, but discovered in his near-decade of preaching that these churches were held hostage. This was no free church. It was a counterfeit church—in Ezra’s words, “a church in captivity.”
In 2002, Ezra moved his family to California to pursue a Doctorate of Ministry. As he studied, believers in China pleaded for his return, relying on his leadership. Sensing a holy calling, like Bonhoeffer to Germany, he and a half-dozen colleagues founded Zion Church in Beijing, a community devoted to worshiping freely and remaining independent—not hiding, but not registered with the state. He and his family returned to China, trusting that God was preparing a harvest there.
For a while, the government turned a blind eye. The church even had its location listed on the Chinese version of Google Maps.
“Authorities knew who we were. We paid rent on time, held services openly, and contributed positively to the community,” said Grace Jin Drexel. “Many local officials actually liked the church because Christians were model citizens—caring for widows, the depressed, families in need, and children, stepping in to serve people the government didn’t have time or resources to help.”
It was there, in 2008, where Cherie Geng gave her life to Christ after a friend invited her to service. It was also there that she met her husband, Yingjia Gao, one of the church’s most senior pastors, detained along with Ezra Jin.
Gao had come to faith in 1999 at Beijing University, and from then on, had an unquenchable thirst for the scriptures.
“When I first got to know [Yingjia Gao] in 2008,” she said, “he could memorize so many Bible verses. Whatever verse you talked about, he could tell you where it was.”
Lily Du likewise officially joined Zion Church in 2013 while studying theology, and after graduating in 2015, began serving full-time in the church’s pastoral ministry.
“I experienced a period when God greatly blessed the church,” she recalled. “A time of revival, where we averaged about 30 newcomers after the service every week.”
She continued, “We truly experienced what Paul described, ‘And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:47 NIV).’”
The number of people grew so rapidly that the sanctuary became too small. The church grew to two Sunday services in Chinese, and then five or six in Chinese, English, and Korean.
In just a matter of years, Zion had become one of the largest churches in Beijing. Lily Du was appointed as the lead pastor for Zion’s first church plant.
Then came a shift. In 2016, the government under Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced new regulations under the “sinicization” campaign—the push to subordinate groups to the Party’s agenda. Church members were harassed and had their bank and retirement accounts frozen if they continued to attend church.
Despite pressure, Ezra Jin refused to register the church under the state-sanctioned system, and refused to install government surveillance cameras in the church’s meeting space.
By September 2018, persecution reached a fever pitch. Lily Du’s church plant was the first to lose its meeting venue.
“Small group leaders and congregants across the church were harassed, with some even facing threats that their children would be barred from school, and they would lose their jobs, and they would be unable to rent housing,” she recalled.
Pastor Wang Lin, the first to be detained this October, had his family evicted from their home in Shanghai. They were forced to live out of their car for months. Other families faced similar hardships: children were expelled from schools, jobs were lost, and homes were taken away.
“However, we were not scattered,” Du recalled. “Instead, we became even more tightly connected. God quickly opened a new path for us.”
Zion Church transitioned its services online, adopting a hybrid model that continued to connect believers across the country. Though Grace Jin Drexel’s mother and brothers had returned to the U.S., Ezra Jin stayed in China with many other Zion pastors, faithfully serving the needs of his congregants and defending their human right to praise God. He has also been under an exit ban for the last seven years, effectively separating the family since 2018.
In 2018, the church had approximately 1,500 congregants. It has since grown to an estimated 5,000. Their daily devotional often reaches nearly 10,000 people.
“I’ve often reflected on this period,” said Grace Jin Drexel. “Many thought that we would face seven years in the desert—seven years of spiritual dryness and persecution. But instead, we experienced seven years of harvest.”
Reverberations and Diplomatic Strain
The 2025 targeting of Zion is far from an isolated event—similar crackdowns have hit other unregistered congregations, such as Golden Lampstand Church and Light of Zion Church, in recent months.
“I really do think 2018 is a good example of what the government is trying to do. For us, our faith is simply about putting Christ at the center of our church. But to them, that’s seen as a direct threat—because it means they’re no longer in control of everything,” said Grace Jin Drexel.
The implications of this crackdown extend beyond China’s borders and risk straining already tense relations with the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the recent detentions of leaders of Zion Church, stating:
“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.
We call on the CCP to immediately release the detained church leaders and to allow all people of faith, including members of house churches, to engage in religious activities without fear of retribution.”
Reports suggest that the treatment of the detainees has improved since that attention began.
“Observers have noted a noticeable difference compared to how pastors in China are typically treated, and for that, we are deeply thankful,” said Grace Jin Drexel.
Almost all of those detained—save for a few (the exact number remains uncertain) —have met with their lawyers. This is unusual in such cases and is likely due to increased international attention.
For Grace Jin Drexel, this trial is an opportunity to engage the global church.
“Ultimately,” she said, “what they want is to isolate the Chinese church and Chinese Christians, to say, ‘You are different. You are cut off from the global body of Christ. But I don’t think that’s true. That is not the body of Christ. In Christ, we are not Jews or Gentiles; we are free. We are His children, citizens of His kingdom,” she continued.
Cherie Geng added: “This seems like a great trial and suffering in men’s sight. My husband told his lawyers that the detention house is like a monastery for the pastors, where they can be closer to God.
“Like Jesus’ incarnation, our dear pastors and coworkers are going to the darkest place to be a light and testimony to those who have never heard the gospel, and might have lost hope for their lives,” she continued. “We both believe there will be a revival in this storm. We just need to stand firm in the place where God has called us to be and see the great things He is going to do.”
Hallelujah
The history of the Christian experience is rife with persecution, harassment, and captivity. For Ezra Jin and Chinese Christians worshiping in urban churches, trials are expected, even rejoiced in as a continuation of the biblical narrative––a story of God’s people choosing faithfulness over submission to worldly power.
“He’s always trusting the Lord, always giving people second chances,” Grace Jin Drexel said of her father. “For him, Christ has done great things—Christ has saved him, and Christ is victorious. That truth gives him this deep sense of peace, freedom, and joy.
“I don’t want to romanticize suffering in any way…but in China, especially in the underground church, people understand the real cost of following Christ,” she added. “There’s a very tangible call to give up things—prestige, comfort, recognition… choosing this path also comes with the knowledge that one day, you might be called to suffer for your faith, like the pastors currently detained—sharing Christ even in detention.”
Grace Jin Drexel, Lily Du, and Cherie Geng believe that their loved ones’ temporary chains have eternal significance.
“The suffering that Christians in China are experiencing is for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. God has already told us this; it is not because of any person, but is the path all followers of Christ must walk,” Du said.
Before the arrests, a Zion pastor asked Ezra Jin how he would feel if his work led to detention.
“The gospel will spread even further,” he said. “Hallelujah.”
*By kindly powers, wonderfully harbored,
We boldly live in hope, so come what may;
For God is near in evening and in morning,
And surely He is with us each new day.—By Kindly Powers by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Grace Salvatore is a writer, performer, and administrator based on New York’s Upper West Side. She is the director of the Dissident Project and a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
Instagram: @grace_daley
Published in Independent Women’s Forum on November 5th, 2025.