China: Pastor of state-run church released

By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The pastor of a state-run church in China’s Zhejiang province was recently released after eight months in detention.

Authorities arrested Zhang Chongzhu — the pastor of a Three-Self Patriotic Movement Church in Pyongyang — on Sept. 8 for resisting the Communist-backed cross demolition campaign. He was later charged him with “stealing, spying, buying or illegally providing state secrets or intelligence to entities outside China.”

Coincidently, Zhang Kai — a human rights lawyer who defended churches against the government’s anti-cross campaign in court — was also charged with the same crimes. Both men had been scheduled to meet with the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, causing some to find a correlation between the meeting and their arrests.