(7 Aug 2018) This rubble is all that remains of a church in Zhengzhou, China.
Amed with saws, dozens of police and officials smashed the church in January.
Scores of churches like these have been dismantled as part of a crack-down on religion by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the communist party.
It's the most systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.
Authorities have also seized Bibles, and at least one township has encouraged Christians to replace posters of Jesus with portraits of Xi.
Those who resist pay the price.
After Pastor Jin Mingri refused local authorities' request to install surveillance cameras inside his house church, police individually questioned hundreds of members of the 1,500-person congregation.
SOUNDBITE(Mandarin) Jin Mingri, House Church Pastor
"It is probably the largest incident of the government using public power to apply pressure on a house church in the past ten years, and it is still going on today."
The pressure has pushed several dozen pastors and their families to flee to the United States in recent years, according to the US-based Christian non-profit ChinaAid.
10. Fu at his desk, showing photograph of church being destroyed (UPSOUND: "This is right after President Xi Jinping took power under this new campaign. This church was totally destroyed.")
SOUNDBITE (English) Pastor Bob Fu, religious dissident and founder of ChinaAid:
"Pastors were being arrested, prayer meeting were being raided, and even sentenced to 13 years, 10 years."
The wife of one pastor under house arrest left for Texas about a year ago.
She wished to remain anonymous.
SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Wife of a pastor under house arrest in China
"It's painful. The government says that we have religious freedom, but really there is no freedom at all."
The crackdown on Christianity is part of a broader push against all religions in China.
China's communist party has long been wary of Christianity because of its affiliation with Western political values.
Several Chinese human rights lawyers have been jailed for their work.
SOUNDBITE (English) Andrew Nathan, China politics expert, Columbia University Professor of political science
"The leadership is viewing all these Christian congregations as kind of dry tinder that could spark up in a certain scenario and they think that foreign forces, the United States, the missionaries and so forth would like to spark up this tinder."
The city of Henan is seen as the epicenter of the crackdown.
House churches that once hosted gatherings of hundreds have now sealed their doors and split into groups of no more than a handful.
On a single Sunday morning in March, 31 illegal Christian gathering places were shut down,
200 religious texts were seized
an 700 religious banners were taken down.
63-year-old Seventh-Day Adventist, Xu Shijuan held house church gatherings for four years in her living room.
She stopped in March, after local officials ordered her to disband the meeting of about two dozen elderly Christians.
Though government policies may be at odds with her faith, she reconciles the difference.
SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Xu Shijuan, a 63-year-old Seventh-Day Adventist:
"Christians pray for the country and for the people, hoping that our country will become better, prosperous and strong."
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