Church founder, pastor released from Chinese prison, says CCP ‘controls everything’ 

After nearly ten months in a “totalitarian” prison in China, Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, 57, was released and reunited with his daughter to meet his newest baby grandson, named after him.

“It’s so dramatic. It’s unimaginable,” the pastor told The Associated Press outside Washington D.C. around the July 4th holiday, adding that his release was “a miracle.”

Pastor Jin was captured in October alongside 26 other leaders of one of the largest underground church networks in China.

Jin founded Zion Church in 2007 after leaving his role as pastor in one of China’s state-run churches, which he called “a church in captivity.” In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party officially banned Zion Church, which had grown to about 1,500 people, after church leaders resisted the installation of security cameras at the church’s property in Beijing.

The church began with just 20 people but grew, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, to plant 100 churches, across 40 cities in the country, drawing more than 10,000 people to meet in person and online, according to BBC.

Before July, Grace Drexel, Jin’s daughter, last spoke to her father about a week before his arrest, when she told him she was expecting her third child. Throughout the spring of 2026, Drexel petitioned the U.S. government to help secure the release of her father.

President Donald Trump told reporters in May after his visit to China that he had mentioned Jin’s case to President Xi Jinping, who said he would “strongly consider the pastor,” according to AP.

On the morning of July 3, Jin, who expected to spend at least 15 years imprisoned, was released and arrived in America for the country’s 250th birthday.

Jin said he did not know of any U.S.-China deal for his release, but he praised Trump’s “unique diplomacy,” the AP reports. Eight other Zion leaders still remain in captivity, according to Christianity Today.

Jin described the conditions of his imprisonment as “very bad” without “any freedom.”

“We just sit on a stool. We need to raise our hands to ask for permission to walk around. All my communications were cut off,” he told PBS News.

The religious persecution in China marks the “totalitarian society” that controls everything, even independent thinking and opinions, Jin explained.

“Chinese society is a totalitarian society. Therefore, the party is in charge of everything,” he said. “Ethnic minorities and various religious beliefs and even some opinionated people as well as independent intellectuals are facing huge pressure in China, even oppression.”