The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States recently announced that Grace Jin Drexel, daughter of Pastor Ezra Jin, who has been detained in China since October 2025, will be attending and speaking at the CPAC International Faith Summit in Grapevine, Texas on March 25.
According to CPAC’s official website announcement on March 18, Grace Jin has been actively advocating on various platforms since her father’s detention by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The statement from CPAC highlighted the arrest of Pastor Ezra Jin during the large-scale crackdown on independent house churches by the CCP in October 2025, attracting international attention. Since then, Grace Jin has emerged as a prominent figure advocating against the persecution of Christians, testifying in the U.S. Congress and the Geneva Human Rights Summit, urging for the release of religious prisoners and exposing the CCP’s suppression of dissidents abroad.
Pastor Ezra Jin is a well-known Christian pastor in China who was born into a Korean family in Northeast China. He got involved in the 1989 Beijing student movement and later converted to Christianity after encountering its teachings. In 2007, Jin founded the Zion Church in Beijing, emphasizing public gatherings and societal engagement.
The Zion Church was once one of Beijing’s largest urban house churches with over a thousand members. Pastor Jin insisted on the church’s independence and opposed CCP control over religious affairs. In 2018, the church refused to install facial recognition cameras, leading to its forced closure on grounds of “venue safety” and “unauthorized use of space”; the church’s assets were confiscated, and its lease with the landlord terminated. As a result, the Zion Church transitioned to online and multi-location gatherings. Pastor Jin was restricted from leaving the country in 2019, thus unable to reunite with his wife and daughter living in the U.S.
On October 10, 2025, Pastor Jin and 17 other Zion Church members were formally arrested by the CCP on charges of “illegal use of the internet.” His wife, Liu Anna, confirmed that Pastor Jin and some of his colleagues were officially indicted on November 18.
The International Religious Freedom Summit announced in December 2025 that Pastor Jin had been included in its 2026 list of religious prisoners of conscience. The IRF Summit aims to mobilize dozens of cooperating organizations and over 1,700 participants to collectively advocate for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Pastor Jin and others detained in the same case.
Grace Jin, the daughter of Pastor Jin, is a human rights advocate and national security expert, currently serving as a National Security Research Analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. She previously worked as a staff member for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), documenting violations of religious freedom and freedom of speech.