One of the most prominent Chinese house churches is raided by CCP, with at least 80 arrested.
Bitter Winter has reported repeatedly President Xi Jinping’s intention of eliminating the gray market of religion in China, consisting of thousands of independent Christian house churches. On December 10, a short release by one of the most well-known house churches in China, the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, announced that “the time has come.”
Pastor Wang Yi, the nationally famous leader of the Early Rain Covenant Church, and his wife have been arrested, together with at least 80 members of the Church. Members and international media believe this to be the final crackdown on Wang’s organization.
As Bitter Winter reported, Wang and members of his Church were arrested in May and June this year, but were later released.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
