Trump pledges to raise detained China pastor Ezra Jin’s case with Xi
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Five weeks earlier than the delivery of her third youngster, Grace Drexel sat in Washington talking about her father, the grandfather her youngsters barely know, and the hope that President donald trump would possibly assist carry him residence.
Her father, Pastor Ezra Jin, has spent the previous seven months detained in China alongside dozens of different Christian leaders in what advocates describe as one of many largest crackdowns on an underground Protestant church in recent times.
Now, as Trump visits Beijing for conferences with Chinese chief Xi JinpingDrexel says her household is clinging to a uncommon second of hope after Trump publicly pledged to raise Pastor Jin’s imprisonment instantly with Xi.
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Ezra Jin Mingri, head pastor of the Zion Church, poses in Beijing on Sept. 12, 2018, days after officers shut down one in every of China’s largest underground Protestant church buildings. (Fred Dufour/AFP by way of Getty Images)
“I’ll bring it up,” Trump instructed a reporter when requested whether or not he deliberate to focus on the detained pastor in the course of the journey.
“It’s such a tremendous honor,” Drexel instructed Fox News Digital. “To have one of the most powerful men in the world know my father by name and mention his case to General Secretary Xi Jinping.”
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales instructed Fox News Digital, “There is no greater champion for religious freedom around the world than President Trump.”
For Drexel, this might finish years of struggling. Her household has been separated for nearly a decade — her mom and youthful brothers fled China in 2018 after authorities shut down Zion Church’s bodily sanctuary in Beijing, fearing they might develop into collateral targets within the rising crackdown on Christians.
Pastor Jin selected to keep behind with his group.
“My father really had many alternatives to apply for a green card,” Drexel mentioned. “He felt the calling for China.”
Drexel herself has not seen her father in particular person since 2020.
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Ezra Jin with his daughter, Grace Drexel, earlier than Chinese authorities detained the pastor throughout a crackdown on impartial Christian church buildings. (Family photograph) (FoxNews)
Now pregnant with her third youngster, she says all she desires is for her father to lastly reunite with his household.
“We would really, really love for our children to also experience and learn from their Grandpa,” she mentioned.
Drexel described his father not as a political dissident, however as a pastor whose solely mission was to stay trustworthy to Christianity outdoors Communist Party management.
“My father is a pastor in China and like Christians everywhere, he believed that the church should only have one God and serve one God,” she instructed Fox News Digital.
She described Zion Church as impartial from authorities oversight and deeply rooted in Scripture and group service.
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US President Donald Trump evaluations an honor guard with Chinese President Xi Jinping throughout a welcome ceremony on the Great Hall of the People on May 14, 2026 in Beijing, China. President Trump is assembly with President Xi Jinping in Beijing to deal with the Iran battle, commerce imbalances, and the Taiwan state of affairs whereas establishing new bilateral boards for financial and AI oversight. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“We helped with the society and the community around us, love our neighbors, and to love God,” she mentioned.
But past the function of pastor, Drexel says she merely knew her father as a delicate man devoted to these round him.
“Ultimately, I know my father as just a very gentle and kind man,” she mentioned. “He is not very confrontational generally. He just loved everyone around him.”
“He never even criticized anyone, including his children, much as we were growing up,” she added.
Drexel tearfully mentioned that relations discovered that his father had been handcuffed, his head shaved, and that he was struggling to obtain treatment whereas in detention.
“And this kind and gentle man is now in prison,” she mentioned. “All because he was just leading a church.”
The crackdown in opposition to Zion Church started years earlier than Pastor Jin’s arrest.
According to Drexel, the strain intensified round 2016 and 2017 after Xi Jinping rewrote China’s non secular laws and formally superior the coverage referred to as the “Sinicization” of religionan effort critics say forces non secular teams to align with Communist Party ideology.
Around that point, Zion Church turned one in every of many church buildings focused by the authorities.
Initially, Drexel says authorities officers demanded the church set up facial-recognition cameras contained in the sanctuary to monitor worshipers.
Ezra Jin leads a service at Zion Church in China earlier than authorities shut down the impartial congregation amid a broader crackdown on Christian church buildings. (Family photograph)
“We told them all our services are public. You can come and see them anytime,” she mentioned. “But we didn’t feel that we wanted to put an extra amount of surveillance or control on our congregation.”
After the church refused, Drexel says authorities put in surveillance cameras within the constructing’s foyer as an alternative and started systematically focusing on church members.
“Each and every member who came on Sunday [was] being harassed,” she mentioned. Some worshipers misplaced jobs, others have been compelled out of flats, whereas some households have been threatened by way of their youngsters’s training and even their dad and mom’ retirement advantages.
“It was all possible under the Chinese Communist Party if they wanted you to stop doing something,” she mentioned.
Authorities finally confiscated the church’s property and shut down its bodily worship house. Pastor Jin then moved companies on-line and into smaller residence gatherings, which led authorities to later accuse church leaders of the “illegal use of information networks” due to these on-line and decentralized worship actions.
But she says her father’s case is just one piece of a a lot bigger crackdown unfolding throughout China.
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The household of Ezra Jin, whose daughter Grace Drexel says they’ve been separated from him for years amid China’s crackdown on impartial Christian church buildings. (Family photograph)
“There are so many pastors and church leaders and churches being actively persecuted in China today,” she added. “We know that there are hundreds of pastors who are currently in prison or are in detention.”
“This is a very critical period in China,” Drexel mentioned. “And it’s very disheartening and very scary for many Christians in China.”
The broader persecution marketing campaign in opposition to Christians, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners can also be documented in “China’s War on Faith,” the just lately launched ebook by former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
Brownback profiles believers imprisoned, tortured, and surveilled for training faith outdoors state-approved establishments and argues that the Chinese Communist Party more and more sees impartial religion itself as a menace to Party authority.
For Drexel, Trump’s resolution to publicly point out his father’s identify represents greater than diplomacy.
“We hope that as the two leaders are meeting together that they will both have a softening of the hearts and will release my father and allow him to come to the US,” she mentioned.
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In this photograph taken Aug. 4, 2018, Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri leads a category on the fundamentals of Christian beliefs on the Zion Church in Beijing, China. (Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)
In a press release to Fox News Digital, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu mentioned the Chinese authorities protects “freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law” and argued that folks of all ethnic teams in China take pleasure in non secular freedom. Liu pointed to official figures exhibiting practically 200 million non secular believers in China, alongside with greater than 380,000 clerical personnel, roughly 5,500 non secular teams and greater than 140,000 registered locations of worship.
Liu mentioned Beijing regulates non secular affairs involving “national interests and the public interest” whereas opposing what he describes as unlawful or legal actions carried out beneath the guise of faith. He additionally accused international international locations and media shops of interfering in China’s inner affairs beneath the pretext of non secular freedom and urged journalists to “respect the facts” and cease what he described as “attacking and smearing” China’s non secular insurance policies and spiritual freedom document.
