Amid tackling every other world crisis, President Donald Trump should take a few minutes to echo Greatest Secretary of State Ever Marco Rubio’s call for Beijing to release Jin “Ezra” Mingri and other leaders of the Zion Church he founded.
If Xi Jinping’s rule of China is so fragile that he feels mortally threatened by independent religious institutions, it’s hard to see how any Western nation can trust his word on anything.
Jin founded Zion in 2007; congregations have since formed across the nation, making it one of the largest ministries in China — albeit as an “underground” church, meaning simply that it isn’t under the state’s thumb.
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But Oct. 11 brought Zin’s arrest as part of nationwide dragnet that saw dozens of other Zion pastors detained.
Under the Chinese Communist Party’s absolutist Code of Conduct for Religious Clergy on the Internet, Jin & Co. stand accused of “suspicion of the illegal use of information networks” for the “illegal dissemination of religion information.”
That is, preaching the Gospel online is a crime in Xi’s China; these pastors are now at risk of years-long detention, often without charge or trial, and likely abuse if not torture while locked up.
Religious persecution in China is nothing new, but Xi’s “Sinicization” program has the CCP pushing for direct control of every church.
With broad arrests of priests and nuns this summer, that campaign also endangers Beijing’s shaky entente with the Vatican.
The drive for religious education to inculcate CCP ideology is also a key part of the relentless crackdown in Hong Kong; the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong reports rising repression of Christian clergy and believers there, albeit not yet as extensive as on the mainland.
Rubio on Sunday warned that Beijing’s Zion Church crackdown “demonstrates how the [CCP] exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference.”
To repeat: It also makes the CCP look pathetically weak — so fearful of free thought that it needs to crush every hint of independence. So brittle a rule is guaranteed to crack catastrophically, sooner or later.
In the meantime, the brutality renders Beijing unfit for friendly relations with civilized nations.