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Chinese preacher awaits trial in prison

The Sola Fide preacher is in jail since Chinese authorities arrested her and other church leaders in 2021. She spent the last three years in jail, waiting for her trial and enduring the harsh treatment. It appears that her trial will finally take place at the end of this month.

It seems that after three years in jail, female Sola Fide Christian preacher Yang Rongli will face trial at the end of October this year. The 66-year-old preacher from Shanxi Province was the leader of a house church, called the Golden Lampstand Church, in Linfen City, Shanxi Province, China.

The church itself is a member of the Sola Fide church community in China that does not form a denomination and is loosely connected to other branches but without central management. These churches do not align themselves with the Communist Party-controlled Three Self Church and are heavily persecuted by Chinese authorities.

Among them, the Golden Lampstand Church faced especially heavy persecution. Since the beginning of the construction of the Golden Lampstand Cathedral, their worship site, in 2004, they have been continuously harassed. Upon realizing the value of the land the church was built on, authorities tried to get the building demolished. They achieved their goal in 2018, when the worship site of the community was demolished.

The current time in jail is not the first for preacher Yang. In 2009, the persecution of the church intensified. Hundreds of police officers surrounded the church building, injuring more than a hundred believers. The same year many church leaders were detained, and Yang Rongli was arrested and charged with “illegal occupation of agricultural land” and “gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic.” She was sentenced to seven years in prison that and was released in 2016.

Their worship site was destroyed, there were several crackdowns and harassment from the authorities, but the congregation did not stop gathering for worship in parks and other places.

The biggest crackdown on the congregation since 2009 happened in 2021. That year, on August 7, the police detained multiple church leaders and co-workers on fraud charges. With some exceptions, most of the detained were formally arrested, among them Yang Rongli and her husband, Pastor Wang Xiaoguang.

In 2022, despite being diabetic and needing treatment, preacher Yang was denied treatment, and as a consequence, her health condition worsened. Now it seems that she and the other arrested members in the Golden Lampstand Church case, will finally face trial  on October 22, this year.

Source: Bitter Winter

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