BY : Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
Chinese house church Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, founder of Beijing Zion Church, has been freed from detention in China and arrived in Los Angeles, less than two months after President Donald Trump raised his case with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. His release coincided with America’s Independence Day.
Jin was released directly from detention Saturday and transported to the United States, according to the Texas-based Christian advocacy group ChinaAid.
Chinese officials reportedly told him that his release followed discussions between Trump and Xi and was presented as a goodwill gesture coinciding with America’s Independence Day.
Jin is now reunited with his family, The Associated Press reported.
A statement from Jin’s family said the release happened very quickly and thanked Trump.
The family said it could not have happened without Xi’s direct intervention and expressed hope that the move signals a positive turn for people of faith in China and for relations between the two nations.
Grace Jin Drexel, daughter of Pastor Jin, and Sebastien Lai, son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, had said in May they were counting on President Trump to raise both their fathers’ cases during his trip to China.
Returning from the state visit to Beijing, Trump said he had raised with Xi the detentions of both Jin and Lai. He told reporters that Xi said he would strongly consider Pastor Jin, but that Xi called Lai’s case a tough one.
Lai, 78, a former clothing magnate and publisher of a Hong Kong tabloid critical of Beijing, received a 20-year sentence in February.
Jin and 17 other leaders of the underground Zion Church were detained in October in one of China’s largest crackdowns on a single church in decades. The move raised concerns about an escalation in the government’s curtailment of religious freedom.
Jin brought his family to the U.S. after authorities targeted Zion Church in 2018, but returned despite the risks. His daughter said last fall that she had not seen her father in six years.
Jin, 56, founded Zion Church in 2007 after studying at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. He converted to Christianity after taking part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and built the congregation into one of China’s largest house churches.
Authorities shut his church’s Beijing premises in 2018 after it refused government demands to install surveillance equipment. The congregation then moved to online gatherings, drawing as many as 10,000 participants through Zoom, YouTube and WeChat.
Jin was detained at his Beihai home, in southern China’s Guangxi Province, in October 2025, when nearly 30 Zion Church leaders and members were arrested or reported missing in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In March, authorities revoked the license of Zhang Kai, who had represented Jin, and suspended the licenses of other lawyers or issued verbal warnings.
Grace Jin Drexel, who lives in the United States, told a congressional committee in November that her father started Zion so that members could worship freely in a church that put God as its sole head.
Advocates welcomed Jin’s release while remembering other church leaders still held.
Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch wrote on X that at least eight members of Zion Church remain detained in China and should all be freed.
Zion Church is among the largest underground or house churches in China. The ruling Communist Party views organized religion as a potential threat to its hold on power.
Under Xi, Chinese authorities have pushed to “Sinicize” religion by demanding loyalty to the party.
Last month, Jin became the first of the congregation’s detained pastors and workers to receive a Bible while held at the detention center in Beihai, after a legal challenge. Pastor Sun Cong followed, after his attorney, Yang Hui, filed an application for administrative reconsideration, a formal appeal process within China’s legal system, challenging restrictions on Bible access.
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