The well-known pastor Jin Mingri, Grace Jin Drexel’s father in China, texted her last Friday to ask her to pray for another pastor who had vanished. According to the passage, the other pastor had been arrested while traveling to Shenzhen, a city in the south. My mother called me shortly after that. The US-based Ms. Jin Drexel told the BBC, “She said she couldn’t contact my dad.”
Her family discovered within hours that Mr. Jin had also been involved in what activists have called China’s biggest Christian arrests in decades. After last weekend’s collection of 30 Christians connected to the Zion Church network, several people are now afraid.
China is home to a sizable Christian population, despite being governed by the atheist Chinese Communist Party. According to latest government statistics, there are approximately six million Catholics and 38 million Protestants.
However, these numbers probably only include members of churches that are registered with the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the officially recognized Catholic Patriotic Association, which place a strong emphasis on allegiance to the Communist Party and China. Tens of millions more Chinese, according to rights activists and academics, attend unregistered churches, also referred to as house churches, which do not adhere to state-approved doctrines.
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