In October 2025, China’s communist regime carried out one of its largest single crackdown operations against Christians to date, arresting some three dozen pastors and members associated with the Zion Church across nine Chinese provinces and municipalities, including its Founder and head Pastor Ezra Jin. Now, some hope for Jin’s release appears to be on the horizon as Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told President Trump during their summit Friday that he is “giving very serious consideration” to releasing the pastor.

On October 10, news surfaced that over “thirty pastors, ministers, and Christian leaders” from Zion Church “have been arbitrarily detained, disappeared, or placed under house arrest.” While some of the Zion Church members have since been released, 17 remain imprisoned, including Jin. The church is part of China’s vast underground network of Christian churches that have not been officially recognized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Independent sources say that there are as many as 160 million Christians in China, with only 44 million officially registered as Christians with the government. Under China’s current dictator Xi Jinping, the regime has significantly ramped up the CCP’s seven-decade long persecution of Christians, imprisoning a vast number of pastors and practitioners estimated to be in the thousands.

“[J]ails in China [are] way overcrowded,” explained former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “They get no sleeping conditions. It’s all very unsanitary. And it’s a form of persecution and penalty [for being a member of] a blacklist[ed] group. Unfortunately, now the Christians … are going to be put into this blacklist like they’ve done [with] Falun Gong and the Muslim Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists.”

Brownback further noted that the CCP’s persecution of Christians appears to be mirroring what occurred during the regime’s early history. “You’re getting back now to the way it was under some of the Mao time period. I think really you’re seeing in Xi Jinping a reincarnation of Mao, if I can use the Buddhist terminology here. He’s going hard at this. He will tolerate none of it. People are being disappeared. This is a war on faith. It’s a war with God.”

In recent years, Zion Church drew the attention of the CCP after it began attracting thousands of online followers through its livestreamed services during and after the brutally enforced COVID lockdowns, as described by Grace Jin Drexel, the daughter of jailed Pastor Ezra Jin.

“He had this online-offline model where we were reaching 10,000 people daily,” she recounted during “Washington Watch.” “Because of that influence and because the Chinese Communist Party tried to shut our church down, but couldn’t, they are now imprisoned today.” She further described how the online model triggered by the pandemic grew the church “beyond anyone’s imagination. God is great and gracious, and during COVID, the miracle happened. … [I]nstead of seven years of desert, we saw seven years of harvest for Zion Church, and we were able to minister to more people than we ever had before.”

But since her father’s imprisonment, Drexel observed, her family has become increasingly worried about his fragile health.

“[He has] very severe Type 2 diabetes and an array of other health issues,” she related. “He’s not a very healthy person in general, and we know that the prison is not giving him the medication that the doctor prescribed for him. My grandma tried to go to the prison and beg them to let my father take these, and they wouldn’t allow her to bring any of the medication in. So we’re very concerned about his health. The food is not great, the sleep is horrible. And we hear that there’s just basically holes in the wall as windows, and the wind and the rain can just come in. It just sounds like it’s a horrible situation.”

Still, a glimmer of hope for Jin emerged Friday when President Trump spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One following his summit with Xi. When asked if he had spoken to Xi about Jin, the president responded, “I think he’s giving very serious consideration to the pastor. He said he’s giving very serious consideration to that.” (Trump added that Xi was giving less consideration to imprisoned publisher and human rights advocate Jimmy Lai, saying that Lai “is a tough one for him.”)

Drexel, who appeared on “Washington Watch” before the news of Xi’s comments broke, went on to urge Christians in the free world to be unafraid to speak up for those being persecuted for their faith, especially in China.

“[A]s an adopted American, I feel like this country is great because this great country stands up for its values, stands up for its faith,” she shared. “It is still the country that speaks out for the voiceless and the persecuted. And there is no country like America. And oftentimes, when it comes to China, many people are afraid because of [its] economic power and military power. Many of our allies would come join us and criticize any other country except China, and it is very, very hard.”

“And even in the U.S.,” Drexel continued, “… I just hope that more people will find souls more sacred than soybeans and being able to fight and defend those that are in prison, like my father. And we hope for a miracle, and we hope that my father will be released. And there are more Christians in China in prison than there [have] ever been since the Cultural Revolution. There are hundreds of pastors, many of them that we don’t even hear about because they’re from smaller places. … I think it requires a lot of prayer, and it requires a lot of people to come together and advocate for.”

Brownback concurred. “[T]he Chinese Communist Party cannot tolerate a faith [being] higher than the government, and they make that point to people. But also, here’s how we can go at this. [T]he glass jaw of the Chinese Communist Party is [the] religion they can’t tolerate. … [E]ighty percent of the world’s population has some faith, and the Chinese people are a spiritual people. We should use this against them [and] use it hard.”

Drexel concluded by underscoring that despite the inhuman lengths that the CCP has gone to stop the spread of Christianity within China, the church has still found a way to flourish.

“I think God works in great ways,” she emphasized. “God is able to do greater things than we can ever imagine. It is true that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, and I believe that God is able to even work through the persecution. But I think it definitely makes the spread harder and more difficult. And so many people are suffering through this [who] should not be suffering in this way. And when one body suffers, I think the rest of the body needs to come together. But I am hopeful because even as Zion Church is being cracked down like this, there are still people being baptized at our church. And those people, they know what the cost is, and they’re still saying, ‘I think you have something real because you want to bear that cross and that cost.’ We just hope and pray that our stories will be told and people will be able to see the miracle happening in China.”