A pastor was bound to iron bars in the shape of a cross.
The warden held out a paper that read "Jesus is a fake" and ordered him to sign. This is not a scene from a novel. It is the torture endured by Peter Xu, founder of China's Born Again Movement house church network, as recorded by former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback in his new book.
Xu is not alone. The religious crackdown underway in China has reached a scale not seen since the Cultural Revolution. In October 2025, Chinese authorities detained Pastor Jin Mingri, founder of the Beijing-based house church Zion Church (锡安教会), along with roughly 30 other church leaders in a coordinated nationwide sweep. Eighteen of them remain imprisoned.
Pastor Jin's daughter Grace Jin Drexel @GraceJDrexel and Sam Brownback @SamuelBrownback appeared on Tony Perkins's YouTube program "Washington Watch," where they urged President Trump, then about to depart for Beijing, to speak her father's name to Xi Jinping.
'For doing nothing but preaching the gospel': The sweep on Zion Church
"My father, Pastor Ezra Jin, has been detained since October 2025 along with 17 other of his church leaders for doing nothing but to preach the gospel," Jin Drexel said on the program. Zion Church had been pushed into an online-centered model by earlier rounds of official pressure, but by the time of the crackdown it was reaching approximately 10,000 people daily through a hybrid network that grew dramatically during the pandemic. "The Chinese Communist Party tried to shut our church down but couldn't. Because of that influence, the leaders are now imprisoned."
'Denied his medication': The detention conditions
The family has no direct contact with Pastor Jin. Information arrives only through lawyers, and even basic facts about his meals, sleep, and medical care remain unknown. Pastor Jin suffers from severe Type 2 diabetes along with other health conditions, but prison authorities are not providing his prescribed medication. "My grandmother went to the prison and begged them to let my father take his medicine, but they wouldn't allow anything to be brought in. We hear that the windows are basically just holes in the wall, and the wind and rain come through," Jin Drexel said.
'A reincarnation of Mao': A war on faith
Brownback warned that religious repression in China is returning to a scale comparable to the Mao era. "I really think you're seeing in Xi Jinping a reincarnation of Mao, if I can use the Buddhist terminology here. He's going hard at this. He will tolerate none of it. People are being disappeared."
"This is a war on faith. It's a war with God." Sam Brownback
He added that Christians are being placed on the same "blacklist" mechanism already applied to Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur Muslims, and Tibetan Buddhists.
On detention conditions, Brownback spoke from direct observation. As a former senator and ambassador, he said, he had voluntarily spent three nights in three different foreign prisons to see conditions for himself. "Prisons in China are often badly overcrowded, with no real sleeping conditions, and everything is unsanitary. It's a form of persecution, of penalty, and of the dehumanization of people."
'Over an oil barrel' and 'souls more sacred than soybeans'
When Perkins @tperkins asked whether the administration was doing enough, Brownback praised Trump as having "done more on religious freedom than any president in the modern era," but noted that the president is currently, in his words, "literally over an oil barrel." The Iran confrontation, the approaching midterm elections, and the structural weakness of a second term are all weighing on him. "Everybody in the world knows the weakest part of the United States is U.S. public opinion."
Jin Drexel, who took the appeal directly to the American public from her position as a naturalized U.S. citizen, said: "America is great because this country has stood up for its values, for its faith, for the voiceless and the persecuted. There is no country like America." But on China, she said, even allies hold back. "Many of our allies would join us and criticize any other country except China. Even in the U.S. it's the same. I might get in trouble for saying this, but I just hope more people will find souls more sacred than soybeans, and that we'll defend those who are in prison, like my father."
"I just hope more people will find souls more sacred than soybeans." Grace Jin Drexel
She added that more Christians are now imprisoned in China than at any time since the Cultural Revolution.
Peter Xu's testimony: Faith under torture
Perkins observed that Chinese Christians may understand Jesus's call in ways American Christians do not. "Jesus said, 'Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.' Living in America, we don't really know what that means."
Brownback agreed. "Not really. But they do. And it's an inspiration to me."
He then recounted, from his new book China's War on Faith, the story of Peter Xu, one of the original founders of China's house church movement.
On his fifth imprisonment, Xu was restrained in a cross formation on iron bars. "He thought he was going to die. He could hardly breathe. They finally cut him down just before he died, and the warden put a confession statement in front of him saying that Jesus is a fake and God doesn't exist, expecting that a man nearly dead would sign it."
Instead, Xu looked at the warden and said the following:
"Thank you for allowing me to participate in the sufferings of Christ." Peter Xu*, from China's War on Faith*
The warden ordered him removed from the cell, saying, "Get him out of here. He's a real believer."
Brownback closed the story with a question to himself. "I thought, what a beautiful thing. Could I do that? Could you do that in that circumstance? People like this bear witness to the beauty and the truth of the faith, and to what Jesus calls us to."
The 'glass jaw' and the appeal to the president
Brownback's strategic argument is that religion is also the Chinese Communist Party's greatest vulnerability. "This is the glass jaw of the Chinese Communist Party. They cannot tolerate religion. And yet 80 percent of the world's population has some kind of faith, and the Chinese people are a spiritual people. We should use this. Use it hard."
Closing the program, Jin Drexel left a three-part request for prayer: for those in prison, for the families left behind, and a direct appeal to a president about to depart for Beijing. "We know the president is in China right now, and we would love for him to mention my father."
Following the May 14 and 15 Beijing summit, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Xi Jinping had told him he is "giving very serious consideration to the pastor." In an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, Trump said he felt "optimistic" about Pastor Jin's release, describing the case as "now under consideration." During the visit, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for the release of Chinese political prisoners, including Pastor Jin.
Whether the conversation translates into concrete action will be watched closely by religious freedom advocates worldwide, and by the tens of millions of Chinese Christians who continue to worship outside the reach of the state.