Chinese ‘Mayflower Church’ Celebrates One Year of Freedom

 By Susan Crabtree- Posted at RealClear Politics:

One year ago, a group of 63 exiled Chinese Christians ended their tumultuous four-year journey to find a refuge where they could practice their faith without fear of Chinese Communist Party persecution. The congregants and their pastor, Pan Yongguang, touched down at Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Good Friday, one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“After all these years of fleeing and running away from the CCP, what we realized that we were seeking is a higher level of freedom – not the American dream, not a Chinese dream, but a dream from heaven,” Pan told RealClearPolitics through a translator in a recent interview. “Being able to worship freely with an extended community of believers and being able to live with my congregation, everybody interacting without fear – this is what we longed for.”

Just days before, their lives were hanging in the balance in a crowded Bangkok immigration detention center. The congregation had left Shenzhen, China, in 2019 after CCP authorities began aggressively questioning Pan and his wife, Fang Wang, about his underground Christian church and dropped in for an “inspection.”

The Chinese police had recently closed another larger underground church, Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church, and arrested all of its members. The CCP also detained a friend of Pan’s, another underground Christian leader, eventually convicting him of inciting subversion and sentencing him to nine years in prison.

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