The Religious Program of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
The Religious Program of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
- Barend ter HaarBarend ter HaarDepartment of Chinese Studies, University of Hamburg
Summary
The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (taiping tianguo太平天國) was a major religious movement that caused a civil war in 19th-century China with a devastating impact on the then Qing dynasty empire. It was shaped by the 1837 visions of the Hakka literatus Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 (1814–1864), in which he received an assignment from the Heavenly Father (his version of the Christian God) to clear the world of demons. These were initially identified as the ruler of the underworld, ancestors, or local deities; later they came to be identified as the Manchus of the ruling Qing dynasty. Hong was influenced by early missionary texts by Protestant missionaries of English and German backgrounds. An equally important event was the appearance in 1848 of Yang Xiuqing 楊秀清 (c. 1820–1856), who successfully claimed that the Heavenly Father regularly descended in him to give instructions to the movement’s following, including Hong himself. In the same year, another man claimed to be the almost equally important voice of Jesus as the savior of the world. Thanks to the rich body of texts produced by the movement itself, a lot is known about the voices of Yang Xiuqing and his colleague but also about the movement’s interpretations of early 19th-century Western Protestantism. Central narratives were the story of Moses, who led the chosen people out of Egypt to the promised land; the death of Jesus on the cross to carry the sins of humankind; and, of course, the visions of Hong Xiuquan and the descent of the Heavenly Father and Jesus into human vessels. The story of Moses probably formed the crucial inspiration for the long trek of the movement from the Guangxi province in the far south to the central Chinese city and former capital of Nanjing on the Yangzi River. The historiography around the movement is extremely diverse, with Chinese communist and nationalist versions but also extensive English language writing. Some scholars stress the Christian dimension, whereas others would stress the combination of indigenous interpretations of Christian texts against a local religious background. Central among the indigenous influences is the conception of the world as filled with demonic beings who can and should be expelled by means of violence, using a sword and a seal.
Keywords
Subjects
- Christianity
- Global Perspectives on Religion