Family member urges House Foreign Affairs panel to press China to release detained Zion Church leaders

Grace Jin Drexel told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that Chinese authorities arrested her father, Pastor Ezer Jin, and dozens of other leaders of Zion Church in a coordinated sweep on Oct. 10, 2025, and she urged U.S. lawmakers to press for their immediate and unconditional release.

"My name is Grace Jin Drexel, and on 10/10/2025, my father, pastor Ezer Jin, was arrested by the Chinese authorities along with 27 other pastors and church leaders from Zion Church," she said in testimony. "Eighteen remain in prison today." Drexel told the committee she fears for detained leaders’ health and safety, and described harassment of congregants that included threats of job loss, evictions, denial of children’s education and seizure of retirement accounts.

Drexel framed the arrests as part of a wider government effort she described as a Sinicization campaign that began in 2016 and, in her view, aims to bring religious life under party control. "This means replacing crosses and replacing them with portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong," she said, and alleged state surveillance measures including the use of facial‑recognition cameras in houses of worship. She said Zion Church declined to install 23 such cameras in its sanctuary and was thereafter subject to intensified pressure.

She recounted earlier actions against the congregation, including a 2018 police seizure of the church building and assets and an exit ban that has kept her father separated from his family in the United States for more than seven years. Drexel said the church expanded online during the COVID‑19 pandemic, leading to the creation of some 100 new church plants in roughly 40 cities and outreach to thousands daily.

Drexel described a new, more severe wave of detentions in 2025 and said the multi‑city arrests over a weekend appeared to be centrally coordinated. She cited other recent incidents she said show a pattern, including the detention of Pastor Gao Chenfu, the demolition of the Yayang Church in Wenzhou and detentions linked to the Early Rain Covenant Church.

She also alleged transnational harassment directed at her family, including threatening phone calls impersonating federal agents, slashed tires at her mother’s home and attempts to surveil or hack family members in the United States. "China wants the world to know that speaking out carries consequences even in America," she said.

Drexel asked U.S. policymakers to use their positions "to speak the names" of detained leaders and to call for the release of Zion Church members and other prisoners of conscience. She said the arrests represent not only a domestic repression but a global threat to religious freedom and human dignity.

Her testimony, as given, noted that the arrests have drawn international condemnation "including from" Marco Rubio (as stated in her remarks to the committee). The committee record includes Drexel’s statement; the hearing transcript supplied no formal response from committee members during the excerpted testimony.

Drexel closed by invoking faith and resilience, quoting a line she said her father wrote from prison, and renewed her plea for advocacy on behalf of detained religious leaders.