A man stands in a room in a house church in Puyang, in China s central Henan province on August 13, 2018. | GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images
Amid an ongoing crackdown on Christians and their churches, communist authorities in China have arrested an elder of a house church in southwestern Guizhou province in a trumped-up fraud case, according to reports.
Zhang Chunlei, an elder of Love (Ren’ai) Reformed Church in Guiyang, was arrested “on suspicion of fraud” on May 1, the day China’s new administrative measures on religious clergy went into effect, the United Kingdom-based nonprofit Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported.
In its newsletter, the house church decried the arrest as a “serious trampling on the Christian faith.”
Early Rain Covenant Church in China | Facebook/Early Rain Covenant Church
Communist authorities arrested a preacher from the heavily-persecuted house church in southwestern Chinaâs Sichuan province, Early Rain Covenant Church, for âallegedly disturbing public orderâ by officiating a memberâs funeral.
Preacher Wu Wuqing was arrested by officers from Damian Police Station in Chengdu cityâs Longquanyi District on Friday afternoon, hours after the funeral service, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported, saying it learned about the arrest from ERCCâs prayer request.
Wu, who s also been persecuted in the past, was released late in the evening.