{"id":4076,"date":"2011-07-29T19:21:24","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T01:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2011-07-29T19:21:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-30T01:21:24","slug":"chinas-banned-churches-defy-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4076","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s Banned Churches Defy Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052702304567604576451913744126214.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop\">Brian Spegel:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>On a recent Sunday at the Beijing Zion Church, Pastor Jin Mingri laid out a vision for Christians in China that contrasts starkly with the ruling Communist Party&#8217;s tight reins on religion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let your descendants become great politicians like Joseph and Daniel,&#8221; said Mr. Jin, referring to the Old Testament figures who surmounted challenges to become political leaders. &#8220;Let them influence the future course of this country,&#8221; the pastor said in one of several sermons to his 800-member church.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Jin is one of a growing group of Protestant leaders challenging China&#8217;s state-run religious system, in an escalating struggle largely unnoticed by the outside world. For the first time, China&#8217;s illegal underground churches, whose members are estimated in the tens of millions, are mounting a unified and increasingly organized push for legal recognition.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Spegel: On a recent Sunday at the Beijing Zion Church, Pastor Jin Mingri laid out a vision for Christians in China that contrasts starkly with the ruling Communist Party&#8217;s tight reins on religion. &#8220;Let your descendants become great politicians like Joseph and Daniel,&#8221; said Mr. Jin, referring to the Old Testament figures who surmounted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,39,9,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4077,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions\/4077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}