A defence lawyer representing Pastor Sun Cong and other leaders of Beijing Zion Church who have been detained in Beihai since October 2025 has secured a rare concession from Chinese authorities, resulting in Pastor Sun receiving a Bible. Observers hope this development will potentially establish a legal pathway for other Christian detainees to gain access to Bibles and religious texts.

Pastor Sun received a Bible last week after his lawyer, a Christian named Yang Hui, successfully challenged detention-centre restrictions through an administrative legal process. The lawyer chose not to rely solely on verbal objections to detention-centre policies, but instead filed an application for administrative reconsideration challenging restrictions that prevented detainees from accessing Bibles.

The challenge prompted a formal written response from the Beihai municipal government, and authorities permitted Yang Hui to deliver a Bible to Pastor Sun. China Aid commented that “this marked a rare accommodation within China’s tightly controlled detention system” in which detention centres often cite security or administrative concerns when restricting access to religious materials.

While several detained pastors from Beijing Zion Church (including founding pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, pictured) had already gained access to Bibles following prolonged legal negotiations, the significance of Pastor Sun’s case is in the written response and the potential precedent it sets.

China Aid’s founder Dr Bob Fu commented, “The greatest significance of this action is that it has established a legal precedent in a formal written form. This means that in the future, family members or defence attorneys of other imprisoned Chinese Christians may be able to use the same lawful channel to deliver Bibles into prisons.”

While it remains unclear whether the decision will influence detention-centre practices elsewhere in China, rights advocates say the outcome in Pastor Sun’s case demonstrates that limited legal remedies may still be available within China’s administrative system, even in politically sensitive religious-freedom cases.

Background

Beijing Zion Church was founded in 2007 by Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri and grew into one of China’s largest and most influential house-church networks, with five thousand members meeting in over forty cities and an estimated ten thousand attending online. The church refused to register and Chinese authorities closed down its Beijing worship facility in 2018 after it refused government demands to install surveillance equipment. Members continued to meet in smaller gatherings and online.

On 9 October 2025 the authorities launched a series of coordinated raids on churches across the network and eighteen pastors and church workers (nine men and nine women) who were detained in the raids remain in detention centres in Beihai. In November they were charged with “illegally using information networks” (for which they could face up to three years in prison) and were placed under official arrest.

Pastor Sun, who has three young children, was taken from his home in a night raid during which authorities searched the premises. His mother collapsed from fright and had to be rushed for emergency treatment.

(China Aid, Zion Church)

Photos: Zion Church