{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415119", "AP article on Smith's CECC hearing on religious freedom in China'Christian pastor's daughter urges US lawmakers to help free her father in China'", "2025-11-21", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "By Didi Tang\n\nPublished November 21, 2025 at 10:02 PM EST\n\nWASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The daughter of a detained Chinese Christian pastor is urging U.S. lawmakers to help free her father at a time when President Donald Trump has vowed to \u201csave our Great Christian population\u201d worldwide.\n\nAppearing before a congressional panel Thursday, Grace Jin Drexel said her father, Ezra Jin Mingri, was formally charged this week along with 17 other leaders of the prominent underground Zion Church. They were detained in October in one of China\u2019s largest crackdowns on a single church in decades.\n\nIt is among the largest churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities, defying restrictions from the officially atheist Communist Party requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.\n\n\u201cMy father started Zion in order to worship freely in a church that put God as the sole head of our church, like many faithful Christians everywhere,\u201d said Jin Drexel, who lives in the United States. Yet, worshippers \u201cwere harassed, threatened and interrogated.\u201d\n\nAs she urged members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China \u201cto use the authority entrusted into your hands and to not forget us,\u201d another hearing was playing out on Capitol Hill where lawmakers praised the Trump administration\u2019s decision to designate Nigeria again as a \u201ccountry of particular concern\u201d over allegations of failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.\n\nPastor Ezra Jin Mingri leads a class on the basics of Christian beliefs at Zion Church in Beijing, Aug. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)\n\nTrump has focused on Nigeria\n\nTrump has said on social media that Christianity \u201cis facing an existential threat in Nigeria\u201d from \u201cradical Islamists.\u201d He threatened to go in \u201cguns-a-blazing\u201d to stop the killing of Christians and said he told the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action.\n\nNigeria, where ongoing violence affects both Christians and Muslims, has seen two mass abductions at schools this week. Students were kidnapped from a Catholic school Friday and others were taken days earlier from a school in a Muslim-majority town. In a separate attack this week, gunmen killed two people at a church and abducted several worshippers.\n\nWhile the U.S. already has dubbed China a country of particular concern over religious freedom, Rep. Chris Smith, who attended both hearings, suggested that Trump should also keep a focus on Christians in China.\n\n\u201cI think the president would be moved by a meeting with all of you,\u201d the New Jersey Republican told Jin Drexel before leaving to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Christians in Nigeria. \u201cGod hasn\u2019t forgotten, nor should we, nor should the president of the United States.\u201d\n\nLiu Pengyu, the spokesperson at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Friday that the Chinese government \u201cmanages religious affairs in accordance and protects citizens\u2019 freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe firmly oppose the U.S. interfering in China\u2019s internal affairs under the pretext of so-called religious issues,\u201d Liu said.\n\nWhite House says it\u2019s aware of Christian leaders\u2019 detentions in China\n\nA White House official, who wasn\u2019t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the president is aware of the Zion Church leaders who were detained and that he \u201cwill always champion religious freedom around the world.\u201d\n\nShortly after Ezra Jin Mingri was taken away in October from his home in Beihai in China\u2019s southern Guangxi region, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Beijing to release him and other church leaders.\n\n\u201cThis crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches,\u201d Rubio said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party by its acronym.\n\nNow, the 18 church leaders have been formally arrested and charged with illegally using information networks and are being held in Beihai, according to CSW, a U.K.-based rights group for religious freedom. The charge likely stems from the church\u2019s use of the internet to share its faith. If convicted, each could be sentenced to up to three years in jail.\n\nChina\u2019s crackdown on Christianity and other religions\n\nIn China, authorities have long sought a tight grip on all religious groups and are particularly wary of religious beliefs in ethnic regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet. The government has cracked down on independent Christian congregations over the past decade, destroying crosses, burning Bibles, shuttering churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith.\n\nZion Church, founded in 2007 in Beijing, grew to have 1,500 members in a decade and was targeted in 2018 after church leaders refused to install facial recognition cameras in its sanctuary, Jin Drexel said. Authorities shuttered church buildings and seized its assets that year, she said. Her father was banned from leaving the country.\n\nZion Church developed a hybrid online-offline model to expand its audience in China, reaching as many as 10,000 people a day, she said. The group CSW says the church is estimated to serve at least 5,000 members and is one of the largest unregistered churches in China.\n\n\u201cChristians in China do not oppose authorities, and the church has always sought to enrich Chinese society,\u201d Jin Drexel said. \u201cThey merely ask to be free from the control of the Chinese Communist Party, a self-identified atheist organization.\u201d\n\nAt the hearing, Sam Brownback, a former U.S. lawmaker and Kansas governor who served as the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom in Trump\u2019s first term, said it\u2019s time to consider religious freedom as a national security imperative.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415119"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9152023121714592, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}