From “Destroying Law Enforcement” to “Fraud”: The Sion Light Case Pushes Church’s Dedication to Criminal Courts

A few days later, his case entered court proceedings. He was also involved in the criminal prosecution, along with the wife of the founder of the Church, Pong Yuan. The case was initially investigated on suspicion of “use of superstition to destroy the law” and now the prosecution is transformed into “fraud” to promote the prosecution, with the dispute center falling to a more direct question: whether the faithful have voluntarily handed over their devotions to the Church for years, and can be redefined by the state as “deceived property.”

The China Aid Association (ChinaAid) revealed on September 17 that the family had previously issued a prayer letter to prepare for the pre-trial meeting on September

1. The family said that the family worked after graduating from high school in 2006 and later went to Xi'an to study theology, participated in church service since 2010, had been trained in the Xi'an Church in Beijing and then returned to the Xi'an Church of Light.

This is not an ordinary property dispute. The Church of the Light of Zion has long been active outside the official "Tri-Self" system. When the police of Zion imposed enforcement measures on multiple people in the church in May 2025, the case was first promoted in the direction of religious activity and so-called "disruption of law enforcement"; a subsequent material published by ChinaAid also showed that the police had once asked the detention center to suspend some lawyer meetings on grounds that the case might involve national security.

At the stage of review and prosecution, the names of the crimes changed. Don Bishop, Cao Tzu, Pong Yoon and others were turned to be accused of "fraud". Originally the case around family church identity, religious activities and national security, thus turned into a criminal case around donation, pastoral identity and use of funds.

Pastor with a monthly income of $3800 is charged with “fraud”

According to the family, he had just participated in church service with a monthly living allowance of about 350 yuan, which has slowly increased in years since then, and the monthly income before his arrest was about 3800 yuan. He and his wife and daughter have lived in a public rental house of about 40 square meters since 2017, the main means of daily transportation being an electric car. His wife, Liu, previously worked in a public transportation enterprise, was unemployed after business operations were difficult, and currently mainly cares for the 7-year-old daughter.

The family's disclosure of these details is clearly in response to the allegations of "fraud through religious activities."If prosecutors believe that Don Bishop and others cheated on the faithful's money in the name of the church, then whether the pastor fictional identity, whether to induce the faithful to deliver the goods based on misunderstanding, where the money ends up flowing, becomes the core of the case.

The case was also closely linked to the High Holiness case.ChinaAid revealed on September 14 that the prosecutor’s office included the approximately RMB 25.5 million long received by the Church of the Light of Zion in the amount of alleged fraud, of which approximately RMB 2.3 million corresponded to 235 people listed as “victims.”

The prosecutors arely proposing a 12- to 13-year sentence for the Holy Father.This figure has rapidly increased the severity of the case: If long-term religious devotion is included in the fraud amount, the criminal consequences would be far more than an administrative penalty for an unregistered religious venue, and could directly turn decades of church devotion and financial transactions into a basis for severe crimes.

Crimes have changed, the logic of state control over the church has not disappeared.

From “use of superstition to disrupt law enforcement” to “fraud,” the change in the name of the crime did not remove the case from the background of religious governance. Instead, it further pushed the control of the identity and religious activities originally targeted at the family church to the level of funding.

Unregistered family churches in China have long been in a special situation: believers can actually participate in gatherings and devotions, but if religious organizations do not enter an official recognition system, their location, pastoral qualifications, financial receipts and training activities can be redefined at any time by administrative or criminal means. The Zion light case shows that this uncertainty not only determines whether a gathering can continue, but also can determine whether years of devotion is considered a religious donation on a given day, or is written into a criminal indictment as a “fraud amount.”

For a long-standing church, dedication usually comes from the continuous support of fixed believers. To qualify this relationship as fraud, prosecutors must prove that the so-called “victim” has a misconception due to fraud and punish property based on this misconception. If only because the church is not registered and pastors have no official religious identity, the voluntary dedication of believers is automatically deduced into fraud income, which would turn the issue of administrative licensing directly into property crime.

The Church denies the fraud, claiming that the devotion was voluntary and finances were managed by a specialized team; the prosecution material allegedly listed bank and payment records, cash accounts, property documents, witness testimony and victim statements, and referred to a portion of the funds being used for personal and property purposes.

Public security, prosecutors, courts, a chain of responsibility is forming

The case has gone through three stages: the public security organs suspected of "using superstition to undermine the implementation of the law" to conduct investigations, and once restricted the meeting of lawyers by national security factors; the prosecutor's office subsequently changed the direction of the accusation, advancing the case to fraud prosecution; Now the case is in court proceedings, the court has begun to become a key link to determine whether evidence can be established, accusation can maintain.

This chain of responsibility also means that the case cannot be examined only at the end of the verdict.Why the police used the original crime in the investigation phase, why the case later turned into fraud, how the prosecutor calculated the Church’s long-term dedication as the amount of the crime, how the right to meet the lawyer was restricted, and whether the court allowed the defense to fully question, all will form the basis for judging whether the proceedings in the case are fair.

The lawyer of the defence has said that he will defend his innocence.The date of the trial has not yet been announced.Don is still in custody, and his 40th birthday has passed.

For the Church of Light of Zion, the case has long gone beyond the personal fate of the three defendants. It touches on a long-standing institutional boundary of the Chinese Family Church: whether a church that does not enter the official religious system can still retain the space for independent gathering, independent pastoral care and independent devotion of believers. When administrative licenses, religious administration and criminal prosecution are overlaped, this boundary is no longer just a question of religious policy, but directly determines whether pastors lose their freedom, whether devotion of believers becomes “pastoral money,” and whether a church can continue to exist.