The Church as an Alternative Polis: Revisiting the Ecclesiology of Wang Mingdao

Abstract

This article explores three different views of Wang Mingdao’s ecclesial stance and his approach to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM): his refusal to join the TSPM as a political rather than theological approach to resisting the Chinese Communist Party; his refusal to accept the TSPM’s authority as the Protestant church’s resistance to Chinese hegemony; and his ecclesial stance as a sectarian withdrawal from the world. Considering these diverse scholarly perspectives, I interpret Wang’s response to the TSPM as part of a necessary proclamatory action and propose that Wang’s model of radical action models the politics of Jesus. His church is political only as defined by the gospel, and it represents a new polis—a kind of community established in and through Jesus of Nazareth to stand as a political alternative to the dominant politics of the world and contribute to an alternative identity of a citizen. I therefore approach Wang’s faith practice from an ecclesiological standpoint and situate him and his ecclesial activities into the historical and theological context to explore his biblical-theological foundation for this new polis and its public witness. I argue that Wang’s rejection of the TSPM and his alternative way of engaging with political issues such as imperialism, nationalism, and church-state relations show that his ecclesial stance is novel and distinct from other forms of politics.