Yesterday, China freed an American pastor—68-year old David Lin—after nearly twenty years of imprisonment for merely trying to establish an illegal house church. Mr. Lin had been given a life sentence, and it was cut short by the Biden administration’s constant insistence that he was wrongfully charge and should be released. The Chinese Communist Party requires all churches be registered with the state and controlled by it, sometimes even supplying churches with selected pastors.
Mr. Lin was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. Since the 1990s, he had been traveling to China to minister there. He was convicted of “contract fraud” due to his efforts in building a house church and was imprisoned in Beijing. The U.S. government’s Commission of Religious Freedom says all this time Mr. Lin has ministered to Christian inmates and translated the Bible into Chinese for them.
Many Christians in China refuse to succumb to such governmental control and therefore participate in the so-called “underground church movement,” in which churches meet clandestinely, usually in houses. Due to the necessary secrecy, it has always been difficult to estimate how many of these Christians exist in China. These house churches have always existed in Communist China, since 1949, and they used to exist in the Communistic Soviet Union. The U.S. State Department says about 200 other Christians are still imprisoned, or similarly coerced, in China for the same or a similar infraction.
This release of Mr. Lin may be due to China’s increasing downturn economically. Because of this, in recent weeks China has been trying to improve its relations with the U.S. Foreign prisoner releases usually help diplomacy with other nations.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In