Authorities in China have arrested leaders and members of a prominent evangelical church that was destroyed with dynamite about three years ago, sparking a global outcry.
Nine leaders and members of the Golden Lampstand Church, a house church in Linfen in Shanxi province, northern China, were arrested on August 7 in a “well-prepared and coordinated” public security operation, reported Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights.
Among the detainees were Pastor Wang Xiaoguang and Evangelist Yang Rongli. Both had previously been arrested in 2009. Before it was demolished with explosives by local authorities in January 2018, the Golden Lampstand Church was a mega-church and one of the largest churches in China.
Its congregation was part of a network of 50,000 members and the church was constructed at an estimated cost of US$2.6 million, according to Bitter Winter. It was the second destruction of a church in China in one month after a Catholic church was destroyed in the neighbouring province of Shaanxi, about 20 years after it was opened, The Guardian reported.