Bipartisan Senators Urge Trump to Press Xi on Detained Chinese Church Leaders
A 10-senator letter asks the White House to raise Zion Church and Light of Zion cases at the Sep 24 Washington summit. Sources: U.S. Sen. Ted Budd press release and letter PDF; International Christian Concern (ICC); Al Jazeera. Accessed Sep 24, 2026 ET.
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On Sep 22, 2026, Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a bipartisan letter to President Donald Trump ahead of his Sep 24 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House. Co-signers included Sens. Chuck Grassley, Jeff Merkley, Roger Wicker, Peter Welch, Katie Britt, Tim Scott, James Lankford, and Ted Cruz. The letter thanked Trump for previously raising the case of Pastor Ezra Jin of Beijing’s Zion Church—released and reunited with family in the United States on July 3 after diplomacy following the May meeting—and urged him to keep religious prisoners “top of mind.”
Specifically, the senators asked Trump to raise Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife Pang Yu, Pastor Tang Bingyi of Light of Zion Church in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, and eight remaining Zion Church members in Beijing: Gao Yingjia, Wang Lin, Yin Huibin, Wang Zhong, Wang Cong, Liu Zhenbin, Lin Shucheng, and Wu Qiuyu. The letter also referenced broader pressure on Tibetan Buddhists, Christians, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners.
International Christian Concern (ICC), writing around the same summit window, similarly framed religious freedom as at risk of being sidelined by trade and technology talks. Trump and Xi met at the White House on Sep 24; initial reporting on the talks, including by Al Jazeera, focused on trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan, and Iran, and did not report whether the detained church leaders were raised.
Sources
Office of U.S. Senator Ted Budd: Budd, Kaine Lead Letter Urging Trump to Prioritize Securing the Freedom of Detained Pastors & People of Faith at U.S-China Summit (Sep 22, 2026)
https://www.budd.senate.gov/2026/09/22/budd-kaine-lead-letter-urging-trump-to-prioritize-securing-the-freedom-of-detained-pastors-people-of-faith-at-u-s-china-summit/Office of U.S. Senator Ted Budd: Letter to President Trump on China Religious Persecution (Sep 22, 2026)
https://www.budd.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Letter-to-President-Trump-China-Religious-Persecution.pdfThe Christian Post: Senators urge Trump to press Xi on religious persecution (Sep 23, 2026)
https://www.christianpost.com/news/senators-urge-trump-to-press-xi-on-religious-persecution.htmlInternational Christian Concern: Trump-Xi Meeting Comes Amid Ongoing Persecution in China (Sep 22, 2026)
https://www.persecution.org/2026/09/22/trump-xi-meeting-comes-amid-ongoing-persecution-in-china/Al Jazeera: Trump-Xi summit: Four key takeaways from the Washington, DC, meeting (Sep 24, 2026)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/24/trump-xi-summit-four-key-takeaways-from-the-washington-dc-meeting
Corrections and updates
- Update, September 24, 2026: Brief prepared from Sen. Ted Budd’s Sept. 22 press release and letter PDF, The Christian Post (Sept. 23), International Christian Concern (Sept. 22), and Al Jazeera (Sept. 24). Named co-signers, the Ezra Jin release, and the people the senators asked to be raised stay with the Budd letter. ICC’s framing of religious freedom against trade and technology talks stays with ICC. The Sep 24 meeting topics, and the absence of a report that the detained church leaders were raised, stay with initial coverage including Al Jazeera. Distinct from the Xi’an Light of Zion pretrial brief and the Beihai Zion 8 brief. Live pages were opened. No prior Wayback snapshots were found. Save Page Now returned 500; archive.today returned 429. No photo.