(China – March 18, 2025) A pastor who served in house churches in Changchun, Shenyang, and Wenzhou for over a decade shared his personal experiences, revealing the repression of religious freedom under China’s religious policies. Particularly during Xi Jinping’s leadership, Churches faced a harsh environment, including bans on minors participating in religious activities and government interference in church appointments. His experiences epitomize what countless house churches and Christians in China went through.
Pastor Wang Xueguang’s family legacy of Christian persecution
Pastor Wang Xueguang was born in Weifang, Shandong, into a family of three generations of Christians. Growing up in a devout household, he recalls his mother praying for the family at four or five in the morning, and that was the morning prayer he remembers. His grandmother suffered severe persecution for her faith during the Cultural Revolution, paraded through the streets, forced to wear a high hat, publicly humiliated and labeled a “class enemy.”
This history left a deeply painful mark on Pastor Wang and planted the seeds for his later reflections.
“Why did we have to endure such treatment? I couldn’t understand it then, but later, I realized that the repression of religious belief is deeply rooted in Chinese society.”
He said in an interview with Radio Free Asia.
From 2010 until his relocation to the United States last year, Pastor Wang served full-time in China’s house churches. Over the years, he witnessed the intensification of religious persecution, especially under Xi Jinping’s increasingly repressive measures.
Chinese Authorities’ Demolition of Church Crosses
In 2014, the large-scale demolition of church crosses in Wenzhou became symbolic of this movement. Pastor Wang, who was in Changchun at the time, recalled hearing about the devastating impact on Wenzhou’s Christians, including an elder who was injured during the incident. “After 2014, countless church crosses in Wenzhou were forcibly removed. The government not only prohibited reconstruction but also forbade any form of restoration,” he recounted.
Chinese Authorities’ Targeting of Children’s Religious Freedom
This was only the beginning. In recent years, Chinese authorities have increasingly restricted church activities, particularly targeting the religious freedom of minors. Pastor Wang personally experienced these strict regulations. On one Sunday in Wenzhou, community personnel barged into the church and, upon seeing children present, immediately ordered the children to leave, prohibiting them from attending the service.
He also faced the shutdown of venues for Church activities — a multi-purpose building once used for Bible study and children’s Sunday school was forcibly closed by the government, preventing the church from operating normally.
Chinese authorities’ Persecution against House Churches and government-sanctioned Christian Churches Alike
This repression extended beyond routine church activities. Pastor Wang recounted the example of a house church worker in Wenzhou who was ordained as an elder outside the government-controlled “Three-Self” church system. As a result, the government imposed a severe fine. Zhejiang’s “Two Associations” of Christianity not only fined him 50,000 yuan but also threatened further coercive measures if he failed to pay, with the prospect of facing more severe consequences.
In communications with peers from the “Three-Self” churches, Pastor Wang discovered that government interference was pervasive even within these officially sanctioned institutions. He cited an example of a classmate who was supposed to be ordained as a pastor. However, the government demanded 80,000 yuan in exchange for ordination, along with an additional deposit of 50,000 to 60,000 yuan as a means to control the pastor’s activities. If the pastor’s sermons were not approved, not only would the deposit be confiscated, but he would also face additional punitive actions, including the suspension of social and medical insurance or even detainment.
These shocking realities reflect the unavoidable challenges faced by Christians in China. The repression of religious freedom in China far exceeds what we might imagine. Pastor Wang’s experiences represent the suffering endured by countless house churches and Christians. His testimony opened our eyes to a harsh truth: China’s religious policies are systematically eroding the fundamental right to faith.
(Reported by Special Correspondent Gao Zhensai of ChinaAid)