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China: Pastor and Wife Sentenced to Lengthy Jail Terms for Online Preaching

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – In a further display of China’s crackdown on evangelical Christianity, a court in Liaoning province has sentenced a prominent online Gospel preacher, his wife, and four house church members to lengthy prison terms for allegedly “using superstition to undermine the law” by expressing and sharing their faith in Christ, the Christian Post (CP) reports.

Now in his 60s, Pastor Kan Xiaoyong and his wife Wang founded the Home Discipleship Network, an online preaching platform, in 2018, CP reports. Accused of superstitious “heterodox teaching,” Kan was sentenced to 14 years in jail by the Ganjingzi District People’s Court in Dalian. Wang and four house church members — Chu Xinyu, Zhao Qianjiao, Zhang Songai, and Liang Dongzhi — were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 10 years.

During the court hearing, both Kan and Wan presented evidence that police had tortured them upon their arrest, and the prosecution did not dispute this, CP reports.

China’s ruling Communist Party is an authoritarian, paranoid regime that considers Christianity a negative Western influence and threat to its own power and control over the vast country. The CCP has systematically and openly sought to advance a program of Sinicization of China, according to which churches may only operate legally if they exalt the government and align their teachings with Chinese socialist culture. Those congregations that agree to the CCP’s demands are registered as Three-Self Protestant churches, but evangelical churches that refuse to align with the CCP have been essentially forced underground as leaders and congregants are frequently harassed and arrested, and severe restrictions have been placed on their general religious freedom.

China ranks 19th on the US Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.

“Persecution and discrimination are slowly spreading throughout most of China,” the Open Doors international Christian advocacy group reports in a website statement. “Restrictions passed in 2018 as part of a wide-ranging law on religion have made it harder for Christians to use the Internet or social media to pursue their faith.”