By Ryan Foley - Posted at The Christian Post:
Published February 3, 2026
WASHINGTON — The daughter of an imprisoned Chinese pastor is expressing confidence as she shared the story of her father’s detention Monday during the sixth annual International Religious Freedom Summit, proclaiming that “even repression cannot extinguish us” and “God will not abandon us.”During her Monday appearance, Grace Jin Drexel discussed the imprisonment of her father, Chinese pastor Ezra Jin. Jin Drexel, who resides in the United States, shared how her father was arrested on Oct. 10 along with 27 other pastors and leaders from Zion Church in what she described as “one of the largest takedown of the independent Christian congregation and China since the Cultural Revolution, a sweep so brazen it has drawn international condemnation, including from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
Jin was detained at his home in Beihai, Guangxi Province, while the remaining leaders were arrested or reported missing from multiple cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
“To understand why my father is in prison, you must understand that China under Chairman Xi Jinping has embarked on a systematic campaign to achieve total state control over religious life through what the government calls sinicization of religion,” she explained.
Drexel condemned “sinicization” as “repression plain and simple.” After defending Chinese Christians as authentically Chinese and highlighting how they have adopted hymns and Bibles in their native language, Drexel lamented that “beginning in 2018, a wave of persecution and crackdown on all religious life began under the auspices of sinicization.”