Pastor Wang Yi in Chinese prison for seven years – his church threatened with closure

Chinese house church pastor Wang Yi has been in prison for seven years. He has lost over 20 kilos - and is allowed very few contacts with the outside world. The authorities have tried to shut down his congregation in Chengdu, but without success.

Dagen has gained insight into the persecuted church in China and Pastor Wang Yi's vulnerability through unique contacts.

– I hope he can get a Bible to read, says Dagen's close source among his friends and family.

OSLO. On the internet in China, Wang Yi is censored. His house church is growing again, even though the past few years have been tough. Just a year ago, the church's meeting leader was once again arrested by the police in the middle of an ongoing service.

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Dagen travels to Norway to meet China expert, theologian, and editor Hannah Nation from the USA, who has published the book ”Faithful disobedience” with pastor and civil rights lawyer Wang Yi as the main author. He has written together with several other imprisoned pastors in the large unregistered and illegal church in China.

Läs artikeln på svenska: Pastorn Wang Yi i kinesiskt fängelse i sju år – hans kyrka hotas av nedstängning

Hannah Nation has seen it as her mission to collect their sermons and theological writings and try to make the message from the persecuted church known to the world.

We will connect with one of Wang Yi’s contacts among friends and family to see if there are any new information about the situation in the prison and for the house church Early Rain Covenant Church. The church in question is active in the provincial capital Chengdu in the southwestern part of the country, a metropolis with about 14 million inhabitants.

Risk of surveillance

In our upcoming digital conversation, the Chinese state's surveillance of unregistered Christians is a very tangible risk. The circumstances require that Dagen sits at the same computer as the visiting theologian, connected via a secure web platform, to avoid eavesdropping as much as possible and to prevent danger to our source in China.

A Mandarin translator is present from the USA, where it is early morning. We ourselves are in Oslo, just after lunchtime, while it is approaching bedtime for Wang Yi’s friend in front of the screen in China. Pastor Yi is in Jintang Prison in Chengdu, and it is out of the question that he could participate in the conversation.

– To be honest, we do not know Wang Yi’s exact situation right now. But we know that he has been in prison for almost seven years, the source tells Dagen.

– I hope he can get a Bible to read, and that he has someone to talk to in prison.

China imposes stricter rules - prohibits
missionaries from preaching

Significant weight loss

The friend reports that Pastor Wang Yi has received only a few visits during his years in prison, and that correspondence with his family has been very limited. Wang Yi appears today, from what has emerged, to be clear in mind and thought, but it is known that he has lost over 20 kilos, and that he has physical health issues where it is uncertain whether medical treatment has been administered.

– In China today, there are many house churches that are subjected to persecution, and where their pastors, elders, and co-workers are arrested because of their faith.

– It is unjust that Wang Yi has been imprisoned for what he has said and expressed. Because he initiated a joint statement from many pastors and because he organised prayer meetings. He has been sentenced because he is a believing Christian, says the source to Dagen. 

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How many Christians live in China today is difficult to know exactly. But various Christian organisations speak of 100 million Chinese who profess Jesus and the Christian faith. Of these, around 80 million are estimated to be in the unregistered and illegal churches, where members and new visitors often meet in small groups in homes and elsewhere. The house churches are of different theological traditions, but they share a common refusal to follow the lead of the Chinese state and the Communist Party.

Pastor Wang Yi, now 52 years old, is perhaps the pastor who has been most public and outspoken in asserting the principle of the Christian church's freedom from the state, and reacting against state persecution of the house churches. He has been described as one of China's 50 most influential intellectuals.

Met the US President

Before he was imprisoned, he travelled to Washington in the USA to participate in a major international religious freedom conference, and got to shake hands with then-President George W Bush.

His arrest in December 2018 was noted by both the New York Times and the BBC. Yet many in the Western world – including Sweden – know very little about the conditions for Wang Yi and the Christians in China.

Their reality has become increasingly harder since 2018 through a series of new restrictions for the churches, ordered by President Xi Jinping. The president and the ruling Communist Party want to see more of a ”sinicization”, where Christian faith, Islam, and other religious groups are to be made ”more Chinese” in accordance with the party’s message.

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Pastor Wang Yi became a Christian and was baptized in 2005, at just over 30 years old. At that time, he was a well-known lawyer, author, and lecturer on civil rights issues at the university in Chengdu.

After his conversion, he began to preach the gospel and, together with his wife Jiang Rong, started a Bible study group that met in their home. Three years later, in 2008, he left the university and became a full-time pastor for what is today called Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) in Chengdu. We are talking about a house church that grew over a decade to gather up to 800 people for worship.

The congregation also started a primary school, a Bible school, and had a group that worked with aid to political prisoners in China.

Wants to be public – but unregistered

Pastor Wang Yi and his house church are within the Presbyterian tradition. ERCC is not the largest house church in the country, but one of the most well-known. This is large part thanks to Wang Yi’s conviction that everything the congregation did should be public, and that they should not hide anything. They are an unregistered congregation, but far from an underground church.

In February 2018, Wang Yi authored a statement signed by 458 Chinese Christian leaders. They reacted against new governmental restrictions for churches and other religious groups through new regulations (”Regulations on the Administration of Religious Affairs”). In the appeal, the pastors described how Christian crosses and churches had been destroyed and how churches were forced to fly the Chinese flag and sing secular songs in worship of the state and politics. The pastors called it an ”abuse of government power”.

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Sunday, 9 December 2018, is a day that Early Rain Covenant Church will not soon forget. The members celebrated a service in one of their smaller churches, where Wang Yi preached. The possibility that he himself could be arrested by the Chinese police was considered, as he had already been approached by the authorities several times during his years as a pastor.

He had deliberately gained a few kilos to better handle a prison stay if the worst were to happen. And he had memorised about 50 psalms and hymns in case he would not have access to a Bible, according to Dagen's sources in China.

But of course it was still shocking when Wang Yi and his wife were arrested by the authorities later that evening in their home.

Small group leaders arrested

Police and authorities simultaneously raided the homes of and arrested about 100 elders, deacons, and group leaders in the house church.

A week later, police prevented the remaining members from entering and celebrating worship in the premises the house church rented for its activities (two floors in an office building). Further arrests followed.

For several years, ERCC and Wang Yi had previously organized prayers for social justice issues for a month each spring, starting and stopping on the dates of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the major earthquake in the Sichuan region in 2008, where much corruption was discovered afterwards. Thus, two very politically sensitive dates. The prayer initiative in the congregation created irritation among the rulers.

Convicted of incitement

Pastor's wife Jiang Rong was released from custody after six months. But Wang Yi was instead sentenced to nine years in prison for ”inciting to undermine state power” and for ”illegal business operations.” He has soon served seven years of that prison sentence in Jintang Prison in Chengdu.

Most of the other leaders in the congregation were released after three to six months, but one other was also sentenced to four years in prison. Elders, deacons, and others were subjected to both abuse and dehumanising acts in detention, according to information provided to Dagen by various Christians in their vicinity.

– It is a form of political sentence that has been issued against Pastor Wang Yi. He had foreseen and prepared for the possibility of being arrested. But that there would be raids against such a large number of elders and deacons in the house church was probably not something many were prepared for, says Corey Jackson in the USA to Dagen.

Corey Jackson is a pastor with many contacts in China and acts as something of a global advocate for Wang Yi and the unregistered church. Jackson lobbies politicians around the world to draw attention to the pastor and civil rights lawyer who is imprisoned.

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Dagen has also been in contact with a missionary from the USA, who for a period served as pastor in Early Rain Covenant Church when Wang Yi was arrested, and who is still in close contact with the house church.

He describes that Early Rain Covenant Church has had a tough period, but that the congregation has since grown so that alongside the mother church there are now several smaller congregational groups mainly in different suburban areas. Some of them are newly planted. Currently, it involves a total of about one thousand people who meet to worship and listen to the word of God in the different units.

Mother church mainly digital

– The smaller groups can hold services where they physically meet, even if they are sometimes interrupted and forced to stop the gathering. But the mother church is more noticeably persecuted and monitored. They mainly meet online, and can meet face to face perhaps once a month, when they also often celebrate communion together.

– This involves about 300 people, including children. They have the most difficult situation, says the former pastor of the congregation.

The members of the mother church are constantly forced to meet in new places, on new premises, to avoid being stopped, he states.

Christians monitored through their phones

Other pastors also arrested

He further reports that one of the pastors in the smaller churches has been arrested and spent a year in prison. And other pastors, elders, deacons, and small group leaders have been exposed in other ways by the Chinese authorities, he states.

– They have been threatened, forced to move out of their apartments and their car has been stopped. The authorities steal keys to their apartments, block the locks and shut down the water or internet.

Many in the congregation also refuse to send their children to the state school, instead the parents provide home education, which exacerbates the conflict with the authorities.

– The parents do not want their children to be brainwashed by communism, but want to use a Christian curriculum with a Bible and other knowledge. This is very challenging, and they need a lot of prayer, says the missionary and pastor who is in contact with the congregation.

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Imprisoned Wang Yi is one of the most well-known pastors in the unregistered house churches. But there are significantly more who are imprisoned in China, even though it is difficult to obtain information about exactly how many. Wang Yi’s ”global advocate”, Pastor Corey Jackson in the USA, says he personally knows the names of about 100 pastors who have had their freedom curtailed.

Another Christian leader in the extensive house church movement in China, who does not know Pastor Wang Yi or Early Rain Covenant Church at all, but is in contact with many other congregations and pastors in the country, says that the situation for Christians in China today is similar to 1983, when ”the great persecution against house churches broke out” and when the government decided to ”isolate all Christians”.

Widespread camera surveillance

– It is particularly difficult for the leaders. They find it hard to move around the country, where camera surveillance is extensive, and they must have a QR code with them to show every time they are stopped by police and security personnel. The pastors cannot be publicly visible at bus stations and trains, but have to travel in private cars to various conferences, like in the boot of a car in the 1980s-1990s, he says.

– But despite these obstacles, the number of Christians keeps growing. No one knows how many thousands becomes believers every day in China.

Bibles from China caught in the crossfire - again

Printing Bibles underground

Recently, the authorities have started collecting Bibles from Christian homes and burning them, as they have understood the Bible’s power of influence, he further reports.

– We have underground printing capabilities underway, and have probably printed 15–20 million Bibles through the network we have. And of course, we continue, says the house church leader on the phone to Dagen.

Much of the strategic training of Christian leaders in China today takes place outside the country’s borders in various parts of Southeast Asia, where pastors and others can go and receive a few weeks of training, he reports. The organisation Open Doors places China in 15th place on the list of countries in the world with the most religious persecution against Christian churches.

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Imprisoned pastor Wang Yi has stirred emotions among Christians in China as well. Some have felt that he has pushed the issue of religious freedom and not following the state’s lead too aggressively, advocating instead for more cautious methods. Yi is described by those Dagen has spoken to as a very humble and humorous person in private, but who shows a much more driven, sharp, and sometimes confrontational side when he stands in the pulpit or writes.

He has experienced internal conflicts in the congregation that caused a split a few years ago.

China tightens the screws on Christians and other religions

“Even Xi Jinping is a sinner”

But he has also garnered great respect among many Christians – even if they don’t agree with everything he has done and said. And he has reached far across society with his sermons, books, and columns in newspapers, and therefore ended up on the authorities’ radar and has been more closely monitored.

Perhaps his criticism reached all the way to the presidential level, believes a former house church pastor from the USA who has close contacts within Wang Yi’s church community.

– In his Bible teaching, he called all leaders to repentance, saying that it doesn't matter if you are a president or a chairman somewhere. Wang Yi said that everyone is a sinner, including President Xi Jinping, which is breaking a major taboo in China.

– The clip where he said this was on the internet, and perhaps it was shown to the president.

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The silence surrounding Wang Yi’s case internationally is one of the biggest threats to him at present, according to those around him in the Christian community. By the end of 2027, he is expected to have served his nine-year prison sentence. Right now, Corey Jackson and Yi’s friends and family are delighted that the US Congress’s China Committee has nominated the imprisoned pastor to be a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an award that is announced in the coming days. 

Sees nomination as recognition

That such a significant body as a committee within the US Congress is behind the nomination pleases both Corey Jackson and the source among friends and family in China that Dagen connects with for a conversation in Oslo.

– I am very happy. This is a recognition of Wang Yi and a rectification of the harm he has suffered. It is a recognition of his words and actions in light of the unjust treatment he has received, says the source.

– It is also a recognition of the Chinese house churches that are being persecuted.

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The theologian and editor Hannah Nation, who publishes the writings and theology of the Chinese leaders in English and other languages, wants to draw the attention of the Western world to the persecuted church and to pastors who are imprisoned by the Chinese state.

But she also believes that Christians in the West have much to learn from the theology put forward by Wang Yi and other pastors. She notes that there are different theological directions – just as among Christians elsewhere in the world – but that there are a couple of common traits.

“Christ – not the state – is the head of the church”

Firstly, “that it is Christ who is the head of the church, and not the Chinese state”. It is deeply rooted in the house churches in China that they do not want to define themselves as part of the state-controlled Three-Self Church. They do not want the Communist Party and the authorities to have authority over what the congregations should teach and how they should develop.

– The Chinese house churches say that we Christians are called to love and serve our cities whether we do it from a position of power or from weakness. Here we in the Western world also have much to learn, says Hannah Nation.

The Inner Life with Christ

The second is ”that the inner life as a Christian – uniting with Christ – is important to endure persecution.” And here it is more about one's own experience of Christ – and the rich life in the Holy Spirit – than about academic and intellectual knowledge of theological doctrines, she states.

– We in the West probably need to understand what suffering means, and that as Christians we cannot avoid suffering, even if it comes in different forms.

– When crises come, we need to suffer together with Christ, says Hannah Nation.

She is passionate about highlighting the situation for unregistered Christians in China and engaging the world by listening to them. She also wants to continue translating texts from pastors in the Chinese house churches into other languages. This is to help persecuted Christians in other parts of the world in the long term.

Imprisoned pastor Wang Yi is a leading figure in this work.