TAIYUAN, China — Chinese authorities have detained Pastor An Yankui at his home on suspicion of “organizing illegal religious activities,” the latest move in an intensifying crackdown on churches that refuse to submit to the Communist Party’s control.

Officers from the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau took An into custody on the morning of September 29 and handed him a police summons stating the allegation, according to the U.S.-based advocacy group International Christian Concern, which reviewed the record. The document cited Article 96 of China’s Public Security Administration Punishments Law, which requires police to state the reason and legal basis for a summons.

An leads the Taiyuan Xuncheng Reformed Church, an unregistered Protestant congregation. This is not his first encounter with the police. In 2020, he was detained for 15 days and fined over the very same allegation, and since then authorities have held him several more times on various grounds, including an accusation that he gave false reasons for traveling abroad. His church has been raided repeatedly, including during a worship service in October 2025.

So-called house churches like Xuncheng operate outside the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the government-approved Protestant body. Their “crime” is not violence, theft, or fraud — it is simply gathering to worship Jesus Christ without first asking permission from an atheist regime.

The detention is part of a much wider campaign. Pastor Ezra Jin, recently released from Chinese custody, told the 2026 Global Religious Freedom Gathering at Dallas Baptist University that China is still holding more than 150 church leaders and pastors, and he credited prayer and advocacy with his own release. Eight leaders of his Zion Church in Beijing remain in detention, and Jin says their treatment has grown harsher since he was freed. Jin himself was charged with “illegal use of information networks” for running a discipleship ministry on Zoom — teaching the Bible online is, in Beijing’s eyes, a crime.

In Beijing, authorities have also detained pastors and staff members of Jiaquan Church, a house church that has ministered independently for more than two decades and counts 1,000 members. The exact number of those being held and the charges against them remain unclear. Bob Fu, founder and president of ChinaAid, has called on authorities to identify the detainees, disclose where they are being held, state the legal basis for holding them, and allow them access to independent lawyers, describing the detentions as part of a widening campaign against several of China’s most influential urban churches.

The Early Rain Covenant Church in Sichuan has also been struck again. On June 14, police broke up a hotel gathering in Jiangyou and detained more than 30 members; on September 10, another 11 Christians, most of them older than 60, were taken from a teahouse Bible reading group. Early Rain was banned after a mass arrest in December 2018, and its founding pastor, Wang Yi, is serving a nine-year prison sentence.

In Guangzhou, in the south, officials confiscated biblical materials from members of Guangfu Church on September 16 and accused them of “promoting a cult,” according to ChinaAid. One member called in for questioning was warned that authorities would investigate his children if he did not cooperate. The congregation was forced out of its rented meeting place.

Even those who defend the persecuted are being driven out. Ruth Wang, the lawyer who has represented Ezra Jin and other Zion Church members since October 2025, has left China with her husband and two children and arrived in Taiwan in September, after authorities pressured her law firm to dissolve.

The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18), but the men who wield the keys in Beijing are doing their worst to try. These brothers and sisters are paying a price simply for gathering in the name of Jesus — a price most of us in the free world never have to think about. They deserve more than our pity; they deserve our prayers, our advocacy, and our unbroken fellowship with their suffering.