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OPINION:
Chinese security agents swept through cities from Beijing to the coast this month, raiding the Zion Church network and detaining its founder, pastor Jin “Ezra” Mingri. The point was plain: In Xi Jinping’s China, devotion that isn’t Communist Party-approved is treated as a political problem for police to solve.
Mr. Jin’s case is not an aberration; it’s the product of a system built to subordinate conscience to the Chinese Communist Party. Under the banner of “Sinicization,” Beijing licenses clergy, edits holy Scriptures, censors online worship, bars minors from religious life and restricts contact with fellow believers abroad. Officials enforce these rules by raiding services, charging pastors with “fraud” or “illegal business” and blocking them from leaving the country.
Americans should care for reasons that go well beyond our sympathy. Freedom of religion is a security stabilizer, and a growing body of research shows it is also a growth strategy. Cross-country studies over the past two decades consistently find that when governments protect peaceful religious practice, they experience fewer sectarian flash points and lower levels of social violence. When repressive governments criminalize ordinary worship, they don’t extinguish faith. They drive it underground, where grievances sometimes harden and make society more combustible and less peaceful.
The prosperity story tracks the same way. Economies thrive when people can organize, teach, publish, donate and build institutions without political permission. Where religious freedom is protected, you tend to see healthier civil society, fairer markets and less corruption — conditions investors love. The same openness that lets a congregation rent a hall, start a school or retirement home, and stream services online is the type of openness that lets entrepreneurs create startups, hire workers and create wealth.
You might expect the Chinese Communist Party to recognize the benefits of protecting faith: greater social trust and less sectarian violence. Instead, it fears any community it cannot control. That fear is ecumenical. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, among many others in China’s diverse religious landscape, face the same pressure now bearing down on Zion Church.
The party’s fears don’t stop at China’s borders. It exports repression: monitoring diaspora communities and congregations, silencing activism by pressuring families in China, and leaning on students and scholars to police speech on U.S. campuses. This is transnational repression. It chills speech in America, distorts what our public and policymakers hear about China, and raises risks for universities and research partners. A state willing to jail a pastor for an unapproved sermon today can coerce a supply chain, or a student or a scientist, tomorrow.
This is why a serious U.S. response should treat Mr. Jin’s detention as more than a consular matter. Religious freedom diplomacy is not a strategic sideshow; it’s preventive statecraft. Prioritizing cases such as Mr. Jin’s at senior levels, coordinating with allies and using targeted tools — including visa restrictions, sanctions to support legal defense, independent education, and secure communications — raise the cost of repression and strengthen the very communities that make societies resilient. Just as important, it turns rights monitoring into an early warning system: When governments start jailing peaceful pastors, policing doctrine online and walling off foreign religious contacts, broader coercion and censorship are likely to come.
Diplomats should say Mr. Jin’s name in every high-level exchange with Beijing until he and his colleagues are free. Don’t stop there. The larger point is this: Defending the freedom to pray, teach and gather without permission is not only who we are but is also a low-cost, high-impact way to keep the world more stable and prosperous. That message should resonate in Washington and in Beijing. It should be impressed on CCP leaders that their war on religion is counterproductive.
If America wants an Indo-Pacific region where law, commerce and prosperity flourish, it must treat religious freedom as a strategic priority. Stable markets and peaceful societies grow where conscience is allowed to flourish.
• Rep. Chris Smith is a Republican representing New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District and co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Sam Brownback is a former congressman, senator, governor and ambassador for international religious freedom.
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