The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has decided some fundamental tenets of Christianity mark the world’s largest faith as a cult, and one that needs vigorous suppression. That includes sentencing a 77-year-old man to jail, in part, for helping young Christians find spouses and believing that faith in Jesus gets people into heaven. According to the CCP, these were the “heretical” activities of a “cult.”
Pastor Yang Zhijin was sentenced to three years in prison, along with 30 of his congregants, for “using a cult organization to undermine the implementation of the law.” The CCP was referring to Yang’s house church, a congregation not part of the state-sanctioned Chinese church, in Henan Province, which prosecutors allege was part of the banned Full Range Church network.
Whether or not that’s the case – under threat of prison, Yang denied it – Full Range itself would hardly be considered a cult outside China. Founded in 1984 by Pastor Peter Xu, it fits squarely in the “born again” Christian movement.
And yet, the CCP has listed Full Range as a cult since 1995. At the time, the label was less a precise legal definition than a CCP designation for religious movements the state deemed politically dangerous, socially disruptive, or doctrinally “heterodox.”
Full Range’s designation was somewhat of an outlier. House church networks don’t usually receive this label, especially not those that follow mainstream branches of Christianity. Full Range, at that time, was one of China’s largest house church networks, with approximately tens of thousands of geographically dispersed congregants across hundreds of different individual groups. The church’s size may have drawn the ire of Communist authorities; however it certainly wasn’t because their beliefs or practices deviated from fundamental Christian principles.
While China’s legal system is largely opaque, Christian advocacy group ChinaAid obtained the transcript of Yang’s court decision.
The People’s Court of Zengdu revealed in its verdict the extent to which xie jiao (cult) law is now being used against even basic Christian beliefs. The prosecution claimed that Full Range “spreads and promotes heretical teachings,” which include: “believing in Jesus leads to heaven, not believing leads to hell,” “everyone is sinful and must confess and repent,” “believing in Jesus can cure diseases,” and “crying for rebirth.” The court found Yang guilty, saying his “conduct constitutes the crime of organizing and using a cult organization to undermine the implementation of the law.”
The court also determined Full Range “interfere[d] with freedom of marriage” – a serious charge in a country where birth rates hit a new low in 2026 and a declining population threatens demographic collapse. How did Full Range interfere? It worked to solve Beijing’s problem by creating a “youth marriage group” where it introduced “partners to marriage-age youth in the church.” In other words, a voluntary matchmaking program was labeled a crime.
As Yang’s conviction shows, Beijing can imprison the faithful for acting on the most basic tenets of Christian faith.
Designating religious groups as cults has a long history of being political rather than spiritual – not just in China, of course – and anti-cult laws predate both communism and the CCP. In 1725, the Qing Dynasty first branded Christianity xie jiao, fearing Western influence.
When the CCP took over China in 1949, it rebranded “cult” to “counterrevolutionary,” and expelled Catholic and Protestant missionaries.
Now, China and its leader Xi Jinping try to control religion with the same iron grip used on everything else, dictating beliefs and banning “cults.”
How does the CCP decide what groups are cults? China’s Supreme People’s Court offered a definition for a cult in 1999: “illegal organizations established under the guise of religion, qigong, or other names, deifying their leaders, fabricating and spreading superstitious heresies, and recruiting and controlling members.”
This definition is deeply ironic coming from the communist cult that leads China. Xi has placed his own “Thought” into the constitution, party charter, propaganda apps, and children’s textbooks, where pupils are taught that “Grandpa Xi Jinping has always cared for us.” Xi has even inherited Mao’s nickname as the CCP’s “Helmsman.” The object of worship has changed; the politics have not. Few have cultivated a cult of personality more assiduously than Mao, and Xi seeks his level of deification.
Yet, the party fails to see the irony. From 1998 and 2016, Chinese courts accepted 23,000 cult cases and acquitted just 69.
The court’s prevalent use of “heretical” in Yang’s case to describe basic Christian values only reinforces this point: the religious orthodoxy his church’s beliefs challenged was Chinese Communism. As the People’s Court put it, Yang was found guilty of using “a cult organization to deceive the masses who did not know the truth.” The implication being, of course, that the CCP holds a monopoly on truth.
As Yang’s conviction shows, basic tenets of Christianity can be legally considered cult-like by the CCP, if convenient. Believing in Jesus, heaven and hell, the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, or Original Sin can end in a prison sentence. If Yang Zhijin and his house church can be labeled criminals, so can any mainstream church.
