When Grace Jin Drexel couldn’t contact her father on October 10, she tried not to panic. She had just heard that one of the pastors of his underground Christian church in China had been detained by authorities; maybe he was busy sorting out the situation.
Then her fears were confirmed. Her father, Ezra Jin Mingri, and dozens of other members of Zion Church had been swept up in a mass crackdown across various congregations and Chinese cities – the largest suppression since a similar wave of arrests in 2018.
Chinese authorities have long seen Christianity as an unwelcome foreign influence and a threat to government control, experts say – and this crackdown sends a particularly stark message, targeting…
