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China: Christian Youth Fellowship Leaders Sentenced to Jail Terms

July 6, 2023

For background on Orthodox Christianity in China, see here.

For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in China, see here.

“Hefei Christian Youth Fellowship: Leaders Sentenced to Jail Terms,” by Wang Zhipeng, Bitter Winter, July 3, 2023:

At the end of June, the Hefei Christian Youth Fellowship informed fellow house churches that two of its leaders, Mu En and Wang Yinuo, had been sentenced to jail terms.

Mu En, 35, who has an eight-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and Wang Yinuo, 33, unmarried, to three years.

Hefei is a university city, and the Christian Youth Fellowship was established to cater to the spiritual needs of college students. From a dozen members in 2018, it grew to several hundred and attracted the malevolent attention of the CCP.

Police summoned Wang Yinuo and asked that the Fellowship join the government-controlled Three-Self Church. He refused, and a gathering of the Fellowship was raided on September 18, 2022.

84 believers were arrested. Most were released within a week, but Wang Yinuo and Mu En were identified as leaders and formally arrested.

They were committed to trial for “fraud,” now a popular charge when money is collected for an “illegal” religious organization….