Leader of China’s underground church calls on Trump to intervene with Xi
Por Alisha Rahaman Sarkar — – World RSS Feed
Leader of China’s underground church calls on Trump to intervene with Xi
With Xi enjoying a grand state visit to Washington this week, pastor Ezra Jin Mingri tells Alisha Rahaman Sarkar he hopes the issues of religious freedom in China and a major crackdown on Christians feature prominently in the talks
Thursday 24 September 2026 06:21 BST
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O n 3 July this year, pastor Ezra Jin Mingriwas suddenly whisked out of his Chinese jail cell and put on a flight to Los Angeles, where he was reunited with his family after eight years.
His release came as a surprise even to the 56-year-old leader of the prominent underground Zion Church, who had spent almost nine months in a jail cell following a nationwide crackdown on churches Beijing deemed unauthorised. He says Chinese officials told him he was guilty of all charges, but he was allowed to leave.
Pastor Jin was reportedly released after US president Donald Trump said he raised the issue personally with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during their meeting in Beijing in May. Trump had said Xi responded that he would give the request serious consideration.
It was among the rare instances in which China bowed to pressure and released a detained prisoner.
With Xi arriving in the US for talks, Trump is facing renewed calls to press for the release of the other detained pastors and express concern over the alleged crackdown on Christians in China. Jin hopes the issue of religious freedom will be discussed at the meeting between Trump and Xi.
“When I first found out, it was so sudden, so it felt very unreal,” he tells The Independent in a interview translated by his daughter, Grace Drexel.
“It was very exciting to be home with my family. It was wonderful,” he says, recalling the moment he met Grace’s third child and his one-month-old grandchild for the first time.
After enduring immense mental and physical pressure, he walked free on American soil on 4 July as America celebrated its Independence Day. But Pastor Jin says the joy was subdued after he learned that eight other leaders of the church were still behind bars along with other pastors in separate prisons across China.
open image in gallery“Because historically, human rights and religious freedom have not been paid attention to, especially in China,” he added.
He adds that since Trump was able to secure his release, “I hope that during president Xi’s visit, the other eight pastors will be released”.
Jin was arrested at his home in Beihai in Guangxi province on 10 October 2025 along with dozens of others. He says the conditions at the detention centre were terrible. “It was not something that I’ve ever experienced before,” he adds.
While he didn’t experience physical torture, the pastor says he has heard of other Christian leaders from other churches being tortured inside the prison. China
Grace tells The Independent that for her father, the prison conditions were extremely tense. “Everything that you do can be used against you. It’s a very humiliating state where even if you wanted to use the bathroom, you had to raise your hand,” she adds.
She says her father looked noticeably frail and much thinner upon his return to the US. “Even weeks later, he couldn’t walk straight. He was kind of wobbling as he was walking. And he just needed new medication,” she says.
“And so we are working on keeping his blood sugar levels and monitoring it so that he gets proper medication,” she adds.
Since his release from prison, Pastor Jin says the campaign against the Christian faith appears to have accelerated. He said raids and arrests have continued across the country, while members of his Church face harassment.
“After my release, they tried to ram the cases through the system and tried to give the other eight cases a quick trial and make them have long sentences,” he said. “Right now they are again pressuring the lawyers. There’s a lot of pressure on the lawyers,” he adds.
Other church leaders, including Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife, Pang Yu, are behind bars, he says, with their cases likely to go to trial soon.
President Xi is accused of cracking down on religious freedom through the communist party’s policy of “Sinicisation”, a term officials use to describe the adjustment of religion to fit Chinese culture as interpreted by the party.
open image in galleryThe government is also accused of cracking down on independent Christian congregations over the past decade, destroying crosses, burning Bibles, shuttering churches, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith.
Christianity maintains a strong presence in communist-governed China. By official estimates, there are 38 million Protestants and six million Catholics in the country. Chinese law promises freedom of religion but requires religious groups to register with the state and operate under strict political oversight. Those unwilling to comply are often left with no choice but to worship underground.
Many underground churches were targeted during a nationwide crackdown in 2018 and the Zion Church’s main sanctuary was shut down.
Pastor Jin founded the church in 2007 after quitting the official Protestant church. During the 2018 crackdown, the government placed travel restrictions on him so he could not visit his wife and three children, who had resettled in the US.
During the Covid pandemic, Zion Church membership grew after it starting conducting online prayer sessions, attracting believers who were unable to attend worship at state-sanctioned churches which often shut their doors due to public-health restrictions. The church currently estimates 5,000 regular worshippers across nearly 50 cities.
Nearly two months after last year’s crackdown on the Zion Church, Chinese authorities arrested approximately 100 members of another unofficial protestant church, Yayang Church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. At least two dozen of them are reportedly still in detention.
But the Church continues to function.
“In China, for many of the Christians in China, not just Zion Church, but generally, many people continue to have faith and live faithfully, according to the Bible, even with the persecution. And it’s the same with Zion Church,” he said.
He said that for Christians inside in prison, there was a sense of pride being there. “It’s not because of what I did, but because I’m being truly faithful to the Lord,” he said.
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