Hunan’s Changsha Grace Light Church Raided by Police

The largest house church in Hunan’s capital has a long and beautiful history. It continues to be a history of persecution too.

by Mo Yuan

*The last general meeting of Changsha Grace Light Church on July 14, 2019, before it decided to worship in separate smaller groups to elude police surveillance. From X.*

The name of Changsha Grace Light Church (长沙恩光教会) in Changsha, Hunan, is well-known in the world of Chinese independent house churches. It has now been raided again.

Changsha Christian Presbyterian Church was founded by foreign missionaries in Qing Imperial China. It continued its activities until it was forcibly incorporated into the government-controlled Three-Self Church in Mao’s years. However, a group including blind and deaf-mute believers resisted the move and continued as a clandestine house church. Eventually, it merged with other house churches in Changsha to form the Grace Light Church, under the leadership of a blind Christian named Zhang Zhongliang.

Later, Zhang was joined by elders who had been expelled from the Nanjing Seminary of the Three-Self Church for their opposition to the regime and grew to become the largest house church in Hunan, with more than 1,000 members.

*Another image of the “last common meeting” of July 14, 2019. From X.*

Grace Light Church was first raided and banned in 2018. It continued to meet in rented spaces and private homes. These meetings were officially forbidden in May 2019, but did not cease. On December 29, 2019, a baptism ceremony in a rented room in Changsha’s Nanfeng Hotel was raided and interrupted. In 2023, the police raided the home of the then 86-year-old Zhang and mistreated and threatened him, although he was not arrested.

From 2019, Grace Light Church has tried to elude police harassment by dividing into smaller group, which worship separately. On November 3, one such group of some 300 believers met in a rented hotel conference room. The gathering was raided by the police, who confiscated the cellphones of the believers and identified them.

*Prayer request of the Grace Light Church after the raid of November 3.*

No one was arrested but the leaders of Grace Light Church now fear for their safety and sent out a prayer request to other house churches and human rights organizations. They are afraid that the beautiful, decade-old history of Grace Light Church may soon come to an end.