Ezra Jin, other detained pastor finally receive Bibles in prison after legal fight
Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, founder of Beijing Zion Church, became the first of the congregation’s 18 detained pastors and workers to receive a Bible while held at a detention center in Beihai, in southern China’s Guangxi Province, after a legal challenge brought by a defense attorney for the group.
Jin was the first of the 18 to receive a Bible. Pastor Sun Cong followed last week, after his attorney, Christian lawyer Yang Hui, filed an application for administrative reconsideration, a formal appeal process within China’s legal system, challenging detention-center restrictions on Bible access, according to Texas-based Christian advocacy nonprofit ChinaAid.
The complaint over Sun’s access produced a formal written response from the Beihai municipal government. Authorities then allowed Yang to deliver a Bible to Sun, a rare accommodation within China's detention system.
ChinaAid founder Bob Fu said the challenge established “a legal precedent in a formal written form.” He added that family members or lawyers representing other detained Chinese Christians might be able to use the same legal channel to deliver Bibles in future cases.
Yang’s success stood in contrast to the treatment of other lawyers connected to the case. In March, authorities revoked the license of Zhang Kai, who had represented Jin, and other lawyers had their licenses suspended or received verbal warnings, The Christian Post previously reported.
Zion Church, which Jin founded in 2007 after studying at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, has been under sustained pressure from Chinese authorities for years. Jin, who converted to Christianity after participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, built the congregation into one of China’s largest house churches, with thousands of worshipers across multiple cities.
Authorities shut its Beijing premises in 2018 after the church refused government demands to install surveillance equipment, and the congregation moved to online gatherings. The services have drawn as many as 10,000 participants through Zoom, YouTube and WeChat.
Jin, 56, was detained at his Beihai home in October 2025, when nearly 30 Zion Church leaders and members were arrested or reported missing in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the case in March, the detention center in Beihai held 18 people, including Jin, and the newspaper said it could not confirm whether he had been formally charged.
Grace Jin Drexel, daughter of Pastor Ezra Jin, and Sebastien Lai, son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, said last month they were counting on President Donald Trump to raise both their fathers’ cases during his trip to China.
Drexel said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump told her family he would mention her father’s name ahead of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month. “We received information a couple of days ago that the president has said that he will mention my father’s name ahead of the summit, and that has given us tremendous joy and hope,” she said.
Drexel’s husband, Bill Drexel, said on the same broadcast that all the lawyers who initially took Jin’s case had been pressured off it.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of Congress have called for Jin’s release. His wife has lived in the U.S. since 2018, and the couple’s three children are American citizens.
Sebastien Lai has said that Trump is the only person who could save his father, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2025 after being convicted of purported national security offenses. He said he fears his father “will die in jail” if not freed soon.
Lai, 78, a British citizen who founded Hong Kong’s now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, has been in solitary confinement since his arrest in December 2020. He was found guilty in December 2025 of colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s controversial national security law and of conspiracy to print and distribute seditious publications under a separate colonial-era statute, with sentencing on the second charge pending.
His legal team has said he has been refused independent medical treatment for diabetes and is allowed out of his cell for only 50 minutes a day. His daughter, Claire Lai, told the 2026 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington in March that he also had heart conditions and infections and was held in a small, dark cell without access to fresh air or sunlight.
