LOS ANGELES (BP) – Wrongfully imprisoned Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri arrived safely in Los Angeles July 4 after China freed him in what is described as a ‘goodwill gesture’ coinciding with America’s Independence Day, ChinaAid and others announced.
Jin, founder and senior pastor of the multisite underground Zion Church, was released July 3 in response to talks between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Jin had been held 266 days for preaching God’s Word in the Communist nation. His family members including his wife Anna Liu and his daughter Grace Drexel, who had long advocated in the U.S. for Jin’s release, were reunited with him July 3 in Los Angeles, according to a story first reported by The Free Press.
“We are feeling so overwhelmed with joy,” Grace and her husband Bill Drexel said in a statement to The Free Press. “We thank God for this tremendous miracle.”
ChinaAid Founder and President Bob Fu also rejoiced upon Jin’s release.
“We rejoice with Pastor Ezra Jin, his family, and the global Body of Christ on this remarkable Independence Day miracle,” Fu said in a press release. “We thank Almighty God for hearing the prayers of His people. We are deeply grateful to President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and all U.S. officials who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to secure Pastor Jin’s freedom. Their unwavering commitment demonstrates that principled leadership and persistent diplomacy can make a life-saving difference.”
Jin had been detained since October 2025 when the government raided churches in a dozen cities across China, detaining Jin and 28 other Zion Church pastors. Jin and 17 others were formally arrested the following month on charges of “illegally using information networks.” While nine of the pastors were released in June on bail pending trial, Jin and eight others were transferred to the procuratorate to face prosecution, with the charges changed to illegal business operations and fraud, religious persecution watchdog CSW said in celebrating Jin’s release.
“CSW welcomes the release of Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri and we are pleased to hear that he has been reunited with his family,” said Mervyn Thomas, CSW’s founder and president. “We emphasize however that he and the other leaders of Zion Church are innocent of the charges levelled against them.”
Fu and Thomas continue to advocate for the release of other religious leaders and laity wrongfully imprisoned in China.
“While we celebrate Pastor Jin’s freedom, our hearts remain with the countless pastors including eight other jailed pastors and coworkers from Zion Church, priests, bishops, house church Christians, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and other prisoners of conscience who remain unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party,” Fu said. “We respectfully call on President Trump and his administration to continue making religious freedom and the release of all prisoners of faith a top priority in every engagement with Beijing.
“True progress in U.S.-China relations must include freedom for those imprisoned simply because they choose to believe,” Fu said.
Thomas expressed similar sentiments.
“We remain concerned for the plight of those still in prison and on bail,” Thomas said. “We call for their immediate and unconditional release, and for that of all other religious leaders and adherents who are currently imprisoned in China in relation to the peaceful exercise of their fundamental human rights, including Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church and Christian human rights defender Zhang Zhan.”
Zion Church, an unregistered Protestant congregation of an estimated 5,000 worshippers across several cities, has suffered persecution by the Chinese government several years, the church’s main building in Beijing forcibly closed in 2018 when the church refused to install closed-circuit cameras for governmental monitoring.
Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors places China 17th on the 2026 World Watch List of the 50 countries where Christians suffer the most persecution, citing Communist and post-Communist oppression and dictatorial paranoia. Christians there comprise about 6.7 percent of the population in the country where the Communist Party considers Christianity a threat to Communist rule.
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