Beijing, China - For decades, Zhang Rongliang roamed across China, an energetic Christian preacher setting up one of the largest networks of Protestant churches operating outside state control.
For the past 16 months, however, authorities have shunted Zhang between detention centers, looking for a court to convict him on charges one judge sought to dismiss because he thought the evidence was flimsy.
''They just keep delaying and delaying and delaying,'' said Zhang Yinan, no relation to the preacher but a friend and a chronicler of China's unofficial Christian churches. ''Just this morning, I prayed for his release.''
Always wary of religion, the communist government has sought to rein in Christianity's rapid spread in China, targeting activist preachers for arrest and intimidation. Preachers have been jailed or driven into exile or deeper underground, depriving Chinese Christians of some of their best-organized and most entrepreneurial leaders.
China's limits on religion are sure to come up when Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with President Bush at the White House today.
Bush raised the issue with Hu in Beijing in November and later told reporters: ''A society which recognizes religious freedom is a society which will recognize political freedom as well.''
In a China where free-market reforms have upended lives once tightly circumscribed by the state and sent people searching for answers, religious belief of all kinds is exploding.
While Buddhism is the most popular religion, Christians now number a conservatively estimated 35 million, up from less than 1 million 50 years ago, according to religious scholars.
Most worship in private homes rather than in churches monitored by state-backed religious organizations.
Many of those caught in the latest dragnet were instrumental in Christianity's revival during Mao Zedong's prohibition on religion in the 1970s.
Zhang Rongliang, the detained preacher, surreptitiously started preaching in central China in 1974. Arrested and sent to a labor camp, he evangelized fellow prisoners.
His China for Christ church, started in the central province of Henan, now is one of the most popular in China. To keep up with the demand for preachers, the church runs secret seminaries where 20 or so students at a time lead cloistered lives of Bible study for a year or two.
''Every day is a risk of imprisonment,'' said Wang Xincai, leader of an evangelical group. He was visiting Beijing - he said his home in Henan is under police surveillance.
Authorities say some religious groups have carried out questionable acts. In the most shocking allegation, prosecutors accused Xu Wenku and 16 members of his Three Grades of Servants church of killing 20 members of a heretical sect.
At his trial last month in a northeastern city, Xu - an avuncular-looking man who ran his church like a stern patriarch - denied the charges and said he was tortured into confessing, as did many of his co-defendants.
In one week, Xu was deprived of sleep and suspended in mid-air for five hours, his lawyer said, according to a copy of his closing statement. ''The defendant thought living was not as good as dying, that whatever they wanted him to say, he would say,'' the lawyer said.
The court has yet to issue a ruling.