Pastor, 6 others from ‘Jerusalem of China’ disappeared after police raid
Police in Wenzhou, the Chinese city sometimes called "China's Jerusalem," raided a house church and took its founding pastor, David Tang, into custody along with six colleagues, all of whom have since vanished.
Those being held include Tang, along with a financial administrator at his congregation, and five ministry workers from Shanghai, the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said.
Shanghai police made the arrests at roughly 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 5, part of a case spanning more than one province, the Texas, U.S.-based nonprofit ChinaAid reported.
Tang leads Wenzhou's Purpose Driven Church, also known as Biaogan Church, which has built a following among young professionals in the city. It has never registered with the government or joined the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the state-run body that supervises China's officially sanctioned Protestant congregations. Beijing forced its closure, and the congregation now gathers discreetly.
People with knowledge of the situation were quoted as saying that officials had tightened controls on information about the episode and blocked posts about it online.
Word only reached the public two days later, when an account called "Day of Prayer and Fasting for Persecuted Churches in China" posted about it on X.
The congregation asked followers to keep the group in their prayers, saying it had no update on their condition.
CSW President Mervyn Thomas called the case an incommunicado detention that has cut off Tang and the others from any word on their location or legal status. Calling enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention breaches of international human rights norms, he pressed Beijing to disclose the group's location, grant them access to lawyers and relatives, and free them unless it can produce solid evidence of a crime.
Bob Fu, who leads the Texas-based nonprofit, said the case fits a wider effort by China's ruling party to squeeze independent Christian congregations, calling the tactics used "intimidation, enforced disappearances and the misuse of criminal law." He said officials now steer away from overtly political or religious charges, turning instead to criminal or financial ones.
Fraud, illegal business dealings and, increasingly, a charge labeled "illegal use of information networks" have become the preferred tools against pastors, Fu said. Beijing's aim, he argued, is to tarnish Christians' standing at home while avoiding the diplomatic fallout overt religious persecution would bring.
Other clergy in the area have faced similar treatment. Pastor Huang Yizi of Pingyang County has been taken into custody, Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, who leads the local Catholic diocese, has lived under restrictions for years, and Father Ma Xianshi, a state-recognized priest, was imprisoned on a business-related charge until his release in July.
Rights advocates say the disappearances fit the Chinese Communist Party's trend of using criminal or bureaucratic tools against religious leaders instead of invoking faith directly, citing numerous cases built on claims of fraud or other financial or online wrongdoing.
The city has faced state pressure over its churches before. In June 2025, Wenzhou Mayor Li Ben broke into Yayang Church and raised the Chinese flag on the church's flagpole. Afterward, the church's leaders and members endured months of summons and threats.
On the night of Dec. 14-15, 2025, more than 1,000 police officers descended on the congregation in one night, questioning hundreds and arresting upwards of 20 after they objected to the flag's placement inside the building. Demolition crews began tearing down the church the following January and finished by May.
Missionaries brought Protestant Christianity to Wenzhou, a port city on China's southeast coast, in the 1800s, and believers now make up an estimated 10th of its residents, a legacy that has not spared it from Beijing's tightening grip on independent congregations.
A campaign in the mid-2010s stripped crosses from religious buildings throughout the province, including the well-known Sanjiang Church, with tolls cited at upwards of 1,500 sites in one account and above 1,000 in another. Observers call it a watershed in how Beijing regulates faith groups.
Since then, civil servants and minors have been barred from entering churches, university students have been barred from religious activity on and off campus, and Sunday schools and youth camps have been shut down. Church members endure surveillance cameras, monitors sit in on sermons, and believers among civil servants risk discipline, demotion or dismissal.
The Open Doors ministry, which monitors persecution of Christians worldwide, says the faith is treated as a threat by the CCP, leaving believers under close watch and tight controls. Registered churches fall under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement or the Catholic Patriotic Association, both closely supervised by the state, while congregations that decline to register meet underground and risk raids, fines, arrest, imprisonment and the seizure of their materials.
Anyone younger than 18 is barred from attending church, and new Christians in regions with Muslim or Buddhist majorities can face threats or violence from their own families and communities on top of state pressure.
