A house church pastor imprisoned and violently attacked for his faith is providing an insider’s look at the situation for Christians living in China.
Pastor Yang Hua, an alias he uses for ministry, leads Guiyang Livingstone Church in Guizhou province. In 2017, his ministry prompted Chinese authorities to arrest and sentence him to prison for more than two years for “divulging state secrets.”
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“The government claimed that our church is an illegal religious organization,” said Yang. “On the same day, they arrested and slapped four charges on me: disrupting public services, disturbing public order illegally, possessing state secrets, and intentionally leaking state secrets.”
The Chinese government demanded Yang and his church join the state-vetted Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) Church. The TSPM is a strategy to remove foreign influences from Chinese churches to ensure they are devoted to the Chinese government.
“The government uses various measures or regulations to suppress the growth of house churches,” said Yang. “Instead of following the truth in the Bible, these TSPM churches continue their ‘Sinicization of Christianity,’ allowing the government to brainwash or change their members at the places of worship, making Christianity serve China. Since we are a house church and hold different beliefs from the TSPM Church, we decided not to join them and continued our path as a house church.”
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The government quickly cracked down on Livingstone Church, sending a joint task force that included officials from the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau, and the Civil Affairs Bureau.
Yang underwent 10 days of administrative detention, followed by a criminal detention. The “state secrets” turned out to be a printed list of his church members.
Arrests of other Livingstone Church members followed. The church accountant, Zhang Xiuhong, was sentenced to three years in prison, of which she served two, and placed on probation for five years. Two more Christians were put in jail for more than a year, while others were detained.
While Yang was in prison, authorities confiscated the 7,000-square-foot church building and put it up for auction. After his release, Yang was forcefully assaulted by a government official, causing his prison-impacted health to deteriorate further.
A third-generation Christian, Yang was influenced by his father who also spent time in prison in the late 1960s for preaching the gospel.
“His faith inspired me to begin serving in 1992 as a teenager, visiting nearby cities along with him to share the good news,” Yang said.
From 2009 to 2015, the Livingstone Church grew exponentially and quickly planted three campuses, attracting nearly 800 worshipers.
In 2018, China instituted revised regulations on Religious Affairs, which placed additional pressure on unregistered religious groups to officially register with the state or face penalties. As a result, larger house churches began to break into smaller groups to avoid raids.
The Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Service were put into effect in 2022, criminalizing any virtual religious gatherings or sermons organized by churches. The rules forced churches to slowly turn from public-facing and online to private and offline.
“During this process many churches that had never experienced persecution like this suspended their services, while others persist,” Yang said.
Many churches in China are operating without freedom Yang said, and many pastors are still incarcerated including Wang Yi from Cheng-du based Early Rain Covenant Church and Zhang Chunlei from Love (Ren’ai) Reformed Church.
“There are many more who are still imprisoned for their faith, some are unknown to the outside world,” said Yang. “You can pray for their family, their loved ones, or children. The wives and children of these arrested pastors often face external persecution and different opinions from within the churches. They endure hardships due to a lack of understanding from others.”
“We do not know how things will evolve in China. One thing we know for sure is that God will continue to do His work in the land of China. He will also testify how He is a faithful and never-changing God through His Church in China.”
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CJ Wu is a writer for Global Christian Relief (GCR), America’s leading watchdog organization focused on the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide. In addition to equipping the Western church to advocate and pray for the persecuted, GCR works in the most restrictive countries to protect and encourage Christians threatened by faith-based discrimination and violence.
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