China’s Assault on Unregistered Faith

Around 2 a.m. on October 11, 2025, Chinese police stormed homes across Beijing and other cities.They handcuffed pastors and seized Bibles in coordinated raids on the Zion Church network, one of the country’s largest unregistered Protestant communities. Founder Pastor Jin Mingri, known as Ezra Jin, was taken into custody at his residence in Beihai, Guangxi Province. He joined nearly thirty other leaders detained on charges of illegally using information networks to disseminate religious content.

Seven months later, on May 21, 2026, eighteen of those leaders, including Pastor Jin, remain held in Beihai City No. 2 Detention Center. Chinese authorities have extended their pre-trial detention and increased pressure on the lawyers who represent them. Pastor Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, now five months pregnant, has traveled internationally to plead for his release and for the unconditional freedom of the other detained leaders. She describes conditions inside the center as harsh, with limited nourishment and no direct family contact. International religious freedom advocates, human rights groups, and members of the U.S. Congress have joined her call.

The roots of China’s religious repression reach back to the 1949 Communist revolution. The Chinese Communist Party expelled foreign missionaries and folded churches into state-controlled patriotic associations such as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Underground house churches like Zion took shape as alternatives and grew steadily despite official bans.

Since Xi Jinping’s ascent in 2012 and his consolidation of power by 2015, the campaign has intensified into a systematic effort to subordinate every expression of faith to party authority. Xi’s policy of Sinicization requires every religion to align with socialist values. It strips away what the state labels foreign influence and inserts Communist Party doctrine into sermons, hymns, and the physical layout of church buildings.

Crosses came down from thousands of steeples. Bibles were revised to reflect Marxist-Leninist priorities. Surveillance cameras appeared inside sanctuaries. By 2018 new regulations confined worship to approved venues and criminalized unregistered gatherings. Raids multiplied. Authorities shuttered Zion’s Beijing megachurch that year, sentenced Early Rain Covenant Church pastor Wang Yi to nine years, and demolished the Golden Lampstand megachurch in Shanxi.

Those measures have since hardened into a broader assault on unregistered faith communities. Pew Research documented China’s policies as among the world’s most restrictive, with more than ten thousand churches razed or repurposed since 2014. Human-rights groups have recorded arbitrary detentions, torture, forced labor, and family separations used to re-educate believers. The pattern continued into 2026. In January, authorities detained leaders of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu and members of Yayang Church in Wenzhou, actions that echoed the scale and coordination of the Zion raids.

These events call for a clear and decisive U.S. response. Senator Ted Budd (R-NC) introduced the Combatting the Persecution of Religious Groups in China Act on October 27, 2025, the twenty-seventh anniversary of International Religious Freedom Day. The legislation, now S. 3056 in the 119th Congress, builds directly on the framework he advanced in the previous session. It classifies the Chinese Communist Party’s religious abuses as gross violations under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. It directs sanctions, including asset freezes and visa bans, against officials responsible for such abuses. The bill also strengthens oversight by prioritizing China-specific cases, directing the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom to support victims, and urging the United Nations to issue formal condemnations.

The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution in November 2025 condemning the Zion Church detentions and demanding the immediate release of Pastor Jin and the other leaders. In March 2026 Senators Budd and Tim Kaine (D-VA), along with Representatives Riley Moore (R-WV) and Thomas Suozzi (D-NY), sent a bipartisan letter urging President Trump to raise Pastor Jin’s case directly with Xi Jinping during their summit in Beijing.

The summit took place from May 13 to 15, 2026. President Trump raised the pastor’s case in his meetings with Xi Jinping. Afterward, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters that Xi had given the matter very serious consideration and would strongly consider the release. That public acknowledgment marked a rare moment of direct engagement on religious persecution at the highest level. Yet as of May 21, Pastor Jin and the other leaders remain in detention. The resolution, the pending legislation, and the diplomatic exchange keep religious freedom at the center of American policy toward China. They reinforce Beijing’s designation as a Country of Particular Concern and tie sanctions explicitly to documented atrocities.

The Zion crackdown reveals how seldom Magnitsky sanctions have targeted religious persecution inside China. Since 2016 more than 740 violators worldwide have faced sanctions, including Chinese officials involved in Xinjiang. Yet few cases have addressed the systematic harassment of Christians. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has noted the Act’s potential while criticizing its uneven application against Beijing. Sen. Budd’s measure would close that gap by creating a targeted plan for mid-level enforcers who orchestrate church raids. In January 2026 Sen. Budd introduced the Banning Perpetrators of Religious Persecution Act to further restrict visas for those who direct or carry out religious freedom violations.

Until the bill becomes law, the administration can apply the existing Magnitsky statute more vigorously. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can designate those who directed the Zion operations. Such steps would follow recommendations the Congressional-Executive Commission on China first offered in 2017.

Each arrest and each demolished church reinforces the message that worship itself amounts to treason. Bipartisan voices in Congress, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), have voiced support for stronger action. Congress can move decisively to defend the universal right to worship freely. As long as Pastor Jin and his fellow leaders remain behind bars, the world has both reason and obligation to speak.

Alex Littlefield has expertise in Indo-Pacific security, Sino–U.S. competition, nuclear deterrence, and economic statecraft. He holds a PhD in International Politics and brings professional experience from the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, the National Defense University–Taiwan, and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China’s School of International Studies.

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