WASHINGTON (AP) — The daughter of a detained Chinese Christian pastor is urging U.S. lawmakers to help free her father at a time when President Donald Trump has vowed to “save our Great Christian population” worldwide.

Appearing before a congressional panel Thursday, Grace Jin Drexel said her father, Ezra Jin Mingri, was formally charged this week along with 17 other leaders of the prominent underground Zion Church. They were detained in October in one of China's largest crackdowns on a single church in decades.

It is among the largest churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities, defying restrictions from the officially atheist Communist Party requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.

“My father started Zion in order to worship freely in a chur

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