The letter went to the White House on Tuesday, September 22. It was led by Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and it carries signatures from both parties. The eight men and women belong to Beijing Zion Church, one of the largest unregistered Protestant congregations in the Chinese capital. Chinese authorities arrested them, along with the church's founder, for refusing to place their congregation under the government-controlled system that registers and supervises religious groups.
The senators thanked the President for the diplomatic pressure that helped free that founder, Pastor Ezra Jin. He came out of custody on July 3 and was sent to the United States after 266 days in detention. Officials in Beijing framed his release as a goodwill gesture from Xi. The senators say the eight who remain should be next.
The letter also asks the President to keep other persecuted groups in mind when he sits down with Xi. It names Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners. Whatever else is on the table at the summit, trade and tariffs among them, the senators want the prisoners named out loud.
Thank God the President has already shown that a firm word can open a prison door. One pastor is home. Eight of his friends are not.
What a locked door teaches
Stop and think about what these people did. They gathered on Sunday. They sang, they read the Bible, they prayed. For that, the state took them from their families and put them behind walls.
A government that fears a prayer meeting has told you something about itself. It has decided that Caesar owns the conscience. The church has never accepted that claim, and the church in Beijing does not accept it today. Those believers would not bring Christ's flock under a government license, and they are paying for it.
Here in America we sometimes forget how precious a thing we hold. You can walk into a church this morning and nobody will ask for a permit from the state to worship. That freedom was bought, and it can be lost. Where it is trampled, the answer is not despair. The answer is that we remember those in chains as though we were chained with them.
"Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." (Hebrews 13:3)
Notice the words "as bound with them." God does not ask for a passing sympathy. He asks that a Christian in a comfortable pew feel the weight of the iron on a brother's wrist.
The chains that cannot hold the Word
Paul knew a prison cell. He wrote to Timothy that he suffered trouble as an evildoer, even unto bonds, and then he added a line that every jailer in history has had to answer: "but the word of God is not bound." That is the same truth the Chinese church has proven for decades. The more it is squeezed, the more it grows.
The eight in custody are not forgotten by heaven. A guard may hold the key to the door, but he does not hold the key to the man's heart. The One who opened the prison for Peter still knows every cell in China.
The right response for you is plain. Learn their names. Pray for them by name. Thank the leaders who speak up, and ask them to keep speaking. Rulers hold their office under God, and a ruler who lets a prisoner go has done a good and merciful thing. A ruler who keeps him has an account to settle with the Judge of all the earth.
And keep your own faith honest. The pastors of Beijing counted Christ worth a cell. The question that lands on your doorstep is whether you count Him worth an hour on a Sunday morning, an open Bible on a weeknight, and a word of testimony to your neighbor. The gospel is the same in Beijing as in Birmingham. Christ died for sinners, rose the third day, and calls every man to repent and believe. No summit, no treaty and no prison wall can change that.