Grace Jin Drexel’s father, well-known pastor Jin Mingri, in China, texted her last Friday to ask her to pray for another pastor who had vanished. The other pastor had been arrested while traveling to Shenzhen, a city in the south, according to the scripture. My mother called me a short while later. “She claimed she was unable to get in touch with my father,” Ms. Jin Drexel, a US resident, told the BBC.
The fact that Mr. Jin had also been involved in what campaigners have called China’s largest Christian arrest in decades was revealed to her family within hours. The arrest of 30 Christians connected to the Zion Church network last weekend has caused some people to get alarmed.
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China has a significant Christian population, even though the country is governed by the atheist Chinese Communist Party. There are approximately 38 million Protestants and almost six million Catholics, according to recent government statistics.
These numbers, however, 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.
According to estimates from rights activists and academics, tens of millions more Chinese join house churches, commonly referred to as unregistered churches, which do not adhere to state-approved philosophy.
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