An leads Taiyuan Xuncheng Reformed Church, an unregistered Protestant congregation, meaning it meets outside the state-approved religious system. It is not his first brush with the law for the same accusation. On Dec. 31, 2020, authorities held him 15 days and fined him 1,000 yuan.
The record since then is long. In November 2021 he was criminally detained with a church coworker, Zhang Chenghao, after attending a Christian conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In November 2022 a court sentenced him to one year in prison and a 5,000 yuan fine for "illegally crossing the national border." He finished that sentence on Nov. 21, 2022.
Last year, on Oct. 12, 2025, police raided his church during Sunday worship. An and ten other members were detained for 15 days and released Oct. 28. The length of the present detention was not immediately clear, and no official statement on it was available.
The arrest comes the same week that Beijing authorities held another pastor, Zhou Zixun, and seven coworkers of Jiaquan Church on suspicion of fraud. Taken together, they show a pattern: pastors who refuse to place their pulpits under government oversight are arrested again and again.
What a man does with a pulpit he cannot keep
Consider what the charge says. It does not say An stole, or hurt anyone, or plotted anything. It says he gathered people to worship God. In a free land that is called Sunday morning. Where the state claims authority over the church, it is called a crime.
We who live under the First Amendment forget how rare that gift is. Most of the saints in the book of Acts never had it. Peter and John were commanded not to speak at all in the name of Jesus, and they answered the council plainly: "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." That is the line every believing pastor must walk, in Taiyuan or anywhere. Caesar is owed honor in his place. He is not owed the church.
The deeper question is what holds a man steady through detention after detention, a fine, a prison term, a raided Sunday service, and still sends him back to his people. It is not stubbornness. It is the conviction that Christ is Lord of the church and that no bureau can hold what He has built.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
Note that the Lord did not say blessed are those who escape persecution. He said the kingdom belongs to those who endure it. The officers can hold a pastor's body for fifteen days. They cannot lay a hand on his inheritance. Everything the world can take is temporary, and everything Christ gives is not.
The apostle Paul wrote from a cell, and he wrote this: "But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." (Philippians 1:12) A prisoner's chains became a pulpit. The jailer heard what the synagogue never would.
My friend, this reaches past China. Some of us will never see a police van outside our church doors, yet we face a quieter test. Will we gather when it costs us only comfort? Will we hold to the Word when a neighbor calls it narrow? A believer in Shanxi who risks his freedom every Sunday asks us that without saying a word.
The gospel he preaches is the same one we have. Christ died for sinners, was buried, and rose the third day. That news cannot be registered, licensed, or fined out of existence. Governments rise and fall. The empty tomb stays empty.
It is right for American believers to remember prisoners as being bound with them, and right for American leaders to press the cause of religious liberty abroad, as President Trump's administration has done with Beijing. Those chosen to govern are answerable to God for how they treat His people.
If you are weary tonight, lay hold of what An's persecutors cannot touch. The One who called him is faithful, and He is just as near to a man in a Taiyuan cell as to a man in a warm pew. Turn to Him. Repent of your sin, trust the crucified and risen Savior, and you will own what no police bureau can confiscate.