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Chinese authorities raid Christian church for holding online service

Authorities in China are also continuing their crackdown on Christianity by removing Bible Apps and Christian WeChat public accounts

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Authorities in China’s Guangdong province raided a Protestant church for holding an online worship early this month.

Police surrounded the Shenzhen Trinity Gospel Harvest Church in Shenzhen City and forced Pastor Mao Zhibin and Elder Chu Yanqing to stop preaching, said a report from China Aid.

The US-based group said the incident happened on July 11, about three months since Shi Minglei, also known as Hope, a member of the church, left for the United States.




The church, known to be vocal in its support for calls for justice for dissidents, have recently attracted a lot of followers.

On April 25 this year, authorities also raided the church’s Sunday service and ordered those present to leave for no apparent reason.

Several church members, including Pastor Mao, Pastor Cao Yuan, Elder Chu, and seven other members were brought to the police station.

“We have not faced such a serious situation as this since we founded our church four years ago,” said one of the pastors.

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Pastor Mao and elder Shen Ling have recently signed a “Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith” with Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church.

In April, several members of Early Rain Covenant Church were arrested for participating in an Easter worship service on Zoom and ordered to cease all religious activity.

The group International Christian Concern reported that the Christians were participating in an online worship service from their homes on Easter Sunday when the church leaders were arrested.

The 5,000-member Sichuan house church has not been able to gather in person since the communist regime shut down the church in 2018 and arrested their pastor and other leaders.

Since then, it has opted to gather online.

“At that time I was also in the Zoom call, but there was a long period of time where I did not hear a thing,” said a church member.

“I thought it’s the network connection issue at first, but I soon heard a quarrel erupt. Our co-worker Wang Jun was questioning some people, [saying], ‘Who are you to do this [to us]?’”

Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, estimates that there are about 97 million Christians in China, a large percentage of whom worship in what China considers to be “illegal” and unregistered underground house churches.

Authorities in China are also continuing their crackdown on Christianity by removing Bible Apps and Christian WeChat public accounts as new highly restrictive administrative measures on religious staff went into effect this year.

China is ranked on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians.

The country has also been labeled by the US State Department as a “country of particular concern” for “continuing to engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” – with reports from China Aid and International Christian Concern

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