When Reverand Charlie Wang spoke at the Lead the Way lecture series on behalf of the Biola Chinese Initiative about “Cultural Apologetic,” his words carried a quiet conviction. Drawing on philosopher Paul M. Gould, he reminded the audience that cultural apologetics seeks “to make Christianity both reasonable and desirable—to show that the gospel is true and satisfying even before it is fully understood.”
That idea reframed the entire conversation. It suggested that evangelism today is not only about explaining truth but embodying beauty—helping others long for the gospel to be true.
From Arguments to Imagination
Building on Gould’s framework, Wang described cultural apologetics as cultivating “the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination” within a culture so that faith becomes visible as true and fulfilling. These three dimensions are crucial in a world where countless narratives compete for attention.
In such a pluralistic setting, apologetics cannot remain a battle of ideas. Wang emphasized that cultural apologetics is not about adding more arguments but about retraining our loves and habits through the gospel. The task of the church, he said, is to make the gospel believable through holistic, embodied witness—so that its truth and goodness can be felt as much as reasoned.
At the macro level, this means enriching public life with what is good and beautiful rather than retreating from it. At the local level, it means removing barriers that keep people from faith and offering tangible reasons for hope. The goal, Wang explained, is attraction by grace—a vision of the world renewed by Christ and made more human, more luminous, more whole.
When the Mall Becomes a Cathedral
To show how culture shapes desire, Wang echoed philosopher James K. A. Smith’s image of the shopping mall as the “modern cathedral.” Through its architecture, lighting, music, and rituals, it preaches a liturgy of desire—training us to worship the new, the fashionable, the instant. “Culture,” Wang said, “is constantly training us in what to love and pursue.”
He observed four ways this cultural catechesis works:
- It sells a counterfeit gospel, promising redemption through consumption.
- It redefines salvation, offering therapy instead of transformation.
- It turns relationships into comparisons, forming a community of competition rather than compassion.
- It dulls moral discernment, hiding cost and consequence behind comfort and convenience.
Wang’s point was not that Christians should withdraw from culture, but that no one escapes formation. We are all being discipled—by ads, screens, and rhythms of busyness. Therefore, the church must discern, deconstruct, and retrain the imagination under the story of the gospel.
As he spoke, I found myself thinking about my own daily liturgies—scrolling for affirmation, consuming without reflection. The call of cultural apologetics, I realized, begins with repentance: before we can witness to truth in the world, our own loves must be reordered by grace.
The Church as the Gospel’s Interpretation
Here Wang drew from Lesslie Newbigin’s well-known insight that “the church is the hermeneutic of the gospel.” The world reads the gospel through the way the church lives it.
Wang explained that when the church lives in truth, grace, and mutual care, the gospel becomes intelligible to the watching world. The church, he said, is not a fortress but an alternative polis—a visible community that embodies redemption. Citing Stanley Hauerwas, he noted that the church’s task is not to supply moral ideas to society but to be a different kind of society.
For Wang, the church also serves as a “third space” that connects God and the world—a space where grace becomes tangible. There, people encounter the reality of being loved before being worthy and forgiven before being fixed.
This, I realized, mirrors what ChinaSource often calls the ministry of presence. To be the gospel’s interpretation is to live the story before explaining it—to practice faithfulness in a culture trained to perform.
Why the Chinese Church Needs Cultural Apologetics
In today’s Chinese contexts—whether in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or among the global diaspora—the call to cultural apologetics feels especially urgent. Modern consumerism and digital culture are reshaping what people love and how they imagine “the good life.”
On social media, success and self-expression have become new moralities. In cities shaped by migration and identity tension, many believers are asking how faith relates to social responsibility and belonging. Meanwhile, younger generations often find the church’s language distant or defensive. They are searching for embodied truth—faith that feels honest, creative, and human.
This is precisely where cultural apologetics speaks powerfully. It teaches the church not to fight culture with arguments, but to form culture through presence—to speak with voice, live with conscience, and create with imagination.
To be a faithful witness in this age, the Chinese church must recover a vision of beauty as evangelism—where truth is not only proclaimed but also seen, touched, and lived.
From Theory to Practice
Reverand Wang’s later ministries illustrate what this could look like in practice. His upcoming keynote at the 2025 Chicago Chinese Christian Conference, titled “Cultivating Dialogical Participation in the Church,” explores how congregations can become spaces of genuine intergenerational dialogue.
In an age of polarization, Wang calls churches to “relearn how to dialogue in the gospel”—to let the gospel’s mesonarrative reshape our understanding of both faith and culture. This vision transforms the church into what he calls a “third space” again—where young people and older believers encounter one another in grace, not judgment.
The same vision undergirds his eight-week discipleship course for artists, Created to Create: A Gospel Journey for Artists. From “Redeemed Imagination” to “Art as Witness,” the course invites Christian creatives to reclaim beauty as a form of cultural witness. Here, cultural apologetics moves from abstract philosophy to practical formation—teaching artists to find resurrection beauty amid brokenness.
More recently, as Mandarin Ministry Catalyst for City to City SoCal, Wang has been equipping Chinese pastors and planters to integrate theology, culture, and city renewal. The initiative reflects a distinctly cultural-apologetic approach to mission: rather than measuring success by church size, it calls believers to transform their cities through gospel imagination—renewing workplaces, communities, and public discourse with grace and truth.
The Beauty That Persuades
These examples make clear that cultural apologetics is not merely a theory but a way of being—a rhythm of practice, reflection, and renewal. Whether through cross-generational dialogue, artistic collaboration, or urban engagement, Wang’s ministry reminds us that the gospel’s beauty persuades where argument cannot.
When the church becomes a place where grace is believable—where love feels unearned and joy unforced—it offers a glimpse of heaven’s reality on earth.
This is the task before us: to help the world see that truth and beauty are not rivals but reflections of the same light. And in doing so, to awaken in others the longing that leads to faith.
As Gould puts it, the goal of cultural apologetics is to make Christianity “seen as true and satisfying.” Wang’s reminder to the Chinese church echoes that calling: when people taste the goodness of grace, they begin to believe that it is true.
