Congress warned that China’s crackdown on religious freedom is a national security threat to U.S.

China’s crackdown on religious freedom, including recent arrests of Christian church members, represents a national security threat to the U.S. and must be met with a powerful response, a coalition of experts told lawmakers Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who served as ambassador-at-large for religious freedom in the first Trump administration, urged lawmakers to shift from viewing Beijing’s religious crackdown as a human rights issue and start treating it as a national security issue.

Calling it a “national security imperative,” he said the atheist Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to eliminate faith are part of its larger ambition to wipe out its enemies.

“China is at war with faith, and it is at war with us. We should unequivocally and clearly be on the side of their opponents. China fears religious freedom more than they fear our aircraft carriers or our nuclear weapons,” Mr. Brownback said at a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a joint House-Senate commission.

“If the world’s largest authoritarian state can eradicate religious freedom without consequences, it undermines the authority of America’s founding values and global leadership,” he said.

In recent weeks, China launched its largest religion eradication effort in nearly seven years.

On Tuesday, Chinese authorities arrested 18 leaders of an underground church, the first step toward prosecuting them and potentially sending them to prison for three years.

The 18 were members of the Zion Church, an unofficial Christian “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government. Last month, Chinese authorities detained nearly 30 staff members and pastors belonging to the Zion Church as part of the biggest crackdown on Chinese Christians since 2018.

The Trump administration has denounced the detention of the Zion Church members. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in October that the move demonstrates China’s hostility toward Christians.

China has an estimated 96 million Christians, according to Open Doors, an international organization that mobilizes against attacks on Christianity. More than 44 million Christians are registered with state-sanctioned churches, the majority of whom are Protestant, according to official figures. Tens of millions more are estimated to belong to illegal “house churches” that operate outside the control of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Zion Church has about 5,000 worshippers in nearly 50 cities. It expanded its reach through Zoom sermons after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was founded in 2007 after its pastor, Ezra Jin, quit as a pastor for a state-controlled Protestant church. Chinese authorities arrested church members in 10 cities.

He was among those detained Tuesday.

Ezra Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, said Beijing’s harassment of Zion members followed her in the United States, underscoring for the joint committee how China’s efforts can spread into America.

She said her mother received a phone call from someone impersonating a U.S. agent, and she has been watched and followed as she moves through Washington.

Bob Fu, the founder and president of ChinaAid, an international nonprofit promoting religious freedom, said the persecution of Chinese churches extends around the globe and includes pressure on Chinese Christian churches in the U.S. and Canada to raise the Communist Chinese Party flag.

He said more than 100 CCP agents surrounded his home and threatened his family in an effort to silence him.

“The CCP persecution actually does not stop at China’s border. It has already extended its long arm to overseas, especially in the free world,” Mr. Fu said.

China’s actions are part of a crackdown on Christianity around the globe. On Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Africa subcommittee held a hearing on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

A Catholic prelate from Nigeria, Bishop Wilfred C. Anagbe, told lawmakers that Nigeria remains the deadliest place on earth for Christians. President Trump has designated it “a country of particular concern” over its human rights record, particularly because of what Bishop Anagbe described as genocide.

A recent report from the Nigeria-based International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law says jihadis are destroying at least 100 churches monthly. At least 7,000 Christians in Nigeria have been killed so far this year, according to their study.

On Tuesday, only days after 25 girls were abducted from a boarding school, gunmen attacked a church in central Nigeria, killing at least two people and kidnapping the pastor and some church members. The assault is under investigation.

“Nigeria is ground zero, the focal point of the most brutal and murderous anti-Christian persecution in the world today,” said Rep. Christopher Smith, New Jersey Republican and chairman of the Africa subcommittee. “Moderate Muslims who speak out against the radical Islamists or refuse to conform with the serial killers are murdered as well.”

In China, churches across all faiths have been impacted by Beijing’s tightening control over religious groups. Church buildings have been destroyed, crosses have been removed from public view, religious material has been restricted, and some Christian apps are banned.

In 2005 and again in 2018, the government adopted more stringent regulations on religious groups. The 2018 rules required churches to obtain government approval for public worship. The Chinese Communist Party was stringent in issuing approvals, forcing many churches to stop public activities and shut down.

In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the “Sinicization” of religion.

Signs in recent months indicate that Chinese authorities are again clamping down on religion, especially Christianity.

Pastor Gao Quanfu of the Light of Zion Church in Xi’an was detained in May and accused of “using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of law.” A month later, several members of the Linfen Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi were sentenced to years in prison for fraud, which religious groups have denounced as politically motivated charges.

In September, the Chinese Communist Party announced a new code of conduct for religious leaders, allowing only online sermons conducted by licensed groups. The rules have been widely condemned as an attempt to curtail the online services of underground churches.

“They are afraid of losing control,” Mr. Brownback said. “They’re not acting like a confident country.”

Mr. Brownback and lawmakers on the commission called for U.S. officials to adopt a national security strategy that supports religious freedom within China. He suggested imposing stronger economic sanctions on China to ramp up pressure.

Several commission members agreed that the U.S. needs to do more.

“We need to be thinking in terms of consequences, you know, of responses that are more than just words of condemnation, but that have an impact,” said Rep. James McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat.