Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in China. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Police in Beijing detained more than 30 evangelical Christians as they attempted to gather outdoors for Easter services and confined about 500 to their homes, continuing a broad crackdown on dissent that has also targeted lawyers, bloggers and human-rights activists.”

The article goes on to state that while technically illegal, in recent years house churches have been largely tolerated by authorities. Now that seems to be changing. The growth of Christianity in China is staggering. A Pew Research Center report is cited that says that between 50 million and 70 million Chinese worship in house churches, and more than 25 million worship in state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant churches. By comparison, the Communist Party has around 60 million members.