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Sometimes diplomacy works in ways that sanctions and public condemnations never could. Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, founder of Beijing’s Zion Church and one of 18 church leaders swept up in what NBC News called China’s largest religious crackdown in decades, is now a free man. His release came just two months after President Donald Trump raised his case directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a state visit to Beijing.
The timing is impossible to ignore. Jin arrived in Los Angeles on Independence Day, reunited with his family after years of imprisonment, while the president who advocated for him was celebrating America’s 250th birthday. Some stories write themselves, and this one reads like a testament to what principled leadership can accomplish even when dealing with hostile foreign powers.
Pastor Jin’s case represented everything wrong with Beijing’s approach to religious freedom. His underground church had grown to become one of China’s largest independent congregations, which made it a target. When Chinese authorities want to send a message about who controls spiritual life in their country, they don’t hesitate to use prison cells as pulpits.
Trump’s intervention wasn’t subtle or diplomatic in the traditional sense. On his flight home from Beijing in May, he told reporters plainly that he had discussed Jin’s imprisonment with Xi and that the Chinese leader had agreed to ‘strongly consider’ the pastor’s release. No elaborate negotiating frameworks. No multi-year human rights dialogues. Just a direct request from one leader to another.
The contrast with how previous administrations handled religious persecution cases couldn’t be sharper. For years, American presidents would issue carefully worded statements expressing ‘concern’ about human rights violations while continuing business as usual with Beijing. The persecuted stayed persecuted, and the trade deals kept flowing. Everyone played their part in a diplomatic theater production where the ending was always the same.
Trump’s approach has always been different. He treats religious freedom as non-negotiable and isn’t afraid to leverage America’s considerable economic and diplomatic influence to protect believers abroad. The pastor’s release suggests that approach gets results.
Of course, the work isn’t finished. Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old founder of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, remains imprisoned on charges of conspiring with foreign forces and publishing seditious material. Trump acknowledged after his meeting with Xi that Lai’s release would be ‘much more difficult’ to secure, which tells you everything about how Beijing views different categories of prisoners.
But progress matters. Pastor Jin’s freedom represents a crack in the wall of Chinese religious persecution, and cracks have a way of widening over time. His daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, now a national security analyst with the Senate Republican Policy Commission, spent years fighting for his release through official channels. Sometimes the most effective advocacy happens when family members refuse to let their loved ones be forgotten.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, among many groups celebrating Jin’s release, posted a photo of the pastor with his daughter from years past. The image captures what was at stake, a father separated from his child by an authoritarian regime that fears independent faith more than almost anything else.
For American Christians watching this story unfold, there’s a lesson about the value of leaders who take religious persecution seriously as a foreign policy priority. Not every case will end with a reunion on Independence Day, but every case deserves the kind of direct advocacy that makes those reunions possible.
Pastor Jin is free today because an American president decided his freedom was worth asking for.
What do you think — should religious freedom be a non-negotiable in U.S. foreign policy? Share your thoughts below.
Providence watches over the bold.
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