Religious rights advocates pleaded on behalf of persecuted Christians at a congressional hearing on religious freedom in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, stood alongside Pastor Pan Yongguang, who led more than 60 Chinese Christians out of China to find religious freedom.
“This is really a day of great celebration, but it’s also an appeal to Xi Jinping and to the U.N. and the government here and the governments of all democracies to speak out on behalf of religious freedom. This persecution has got to stop,” Smith said.
The story of the Chinese congregation known as the “Mayflower Church” is one of faith and perseverance.
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Earlier this year, Smith helped the Chinese Christians secure religious freedom in the United States when they were unexpectedly detained and were at risk of forced repatriation to China due to suspected pressure from agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
Smith worked with the pastor of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church to find asylum in the U.S. after they fled China in 2019 to South Korea then to Thailand in August of 2022 before finding a new home in Tyler, Texas.
Pastor Pan told CBN News in May he was stunned by God’s miraculous intervention.
“I was surprised when the Americans said they already bought the tickets and we are to leave right away. It was sort of impossible! I am reminded of the verse in Job that says ‘I have heard about you but now I see you.’ When I got on the plane and leave, I felt like I was dreaming. It reminds me that God is the God who is at work and He will do what He has promised,” he said.
The Mayflower Church members received a warm welcome after landing in Dallas, Texas.
Pan’s son, Paul, and the rest of the members of the Mayflower Church are grateful for the new life they now have in the U.S.
“This is a place where people believe in God and they have the freedom of worship and freedom of faith,” he said. “The freedom I enjoy the most is I can finally go to an official school. I thank God for everything He has done for all of us. He has taken us out of the detention center and brought us safely here to America. And He will let us live in peace and freedom in America.”
Prominent religious leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths addressed the dire state of religious freedom in Communist China. The congressional roundtable hearing was hosted by the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI).
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was one of the religious leaders who participated in the interfaith discussion. He highlighted the struggle of the members of the Mayflower Church but also noted there are millions of people who make up religious minorities still living under the repressive hand of the Chinese Communist Party.
“The select committee holding the roundtable with Chairman Gallagher talking about how religious freedom is something that is being withheld from the people of China,” Perkins told CBN News’ Faith Nation during an interview Wednesday. “It’s very important that we highlight the role that America can play in this in terms of promoting religious freedom abroad.”
“Speaking as the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, I see the implications of that. But here’s our problem, John, is that we have U.S. corporations that you know, 23 years ago were advocating for China to have permanent ‘Most Favored Nation’ status so we could have trade, that our trading, that our economic activity with them would change them,” he said. “Well, two decades later, we find out that our corporations have been changed more by China than we changed them. And we have all of these American companies benefiting from forced labor there in China.”
“And so, there’s a lot of work that has to be done here in the United States to promote religious freedom abroad,” Perkins concluded.
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