Kuhn, Phillip. "Origins of the Taiping Vision: Cross-Cultural Dimensions of a Chinese Rebellion". Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.19, No.3 (1977): 350-366.

Kuhn, Phillip. "Origins of the Taiping Vision: Cross-Cultural Dimensions of a Chinese Rebellion". Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.19, No.3 (1977): 350-366.

• The Taiping Rebellion began with the visions of Hong Xiuquan, a lesser noble living near Guangzhou who fell ill in 1837 after multiple failures to pass the imperial examination. During his feverish dreams, he had a vision of meeting God, who told him to purge China of demons and convert it 'back' to Christianity. Convinced that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, he became a missionary in Guangxi and converted large numbers of people, especially Hakka (350).
• The Hakka community in Guangxi had been in fierce economic competition with the Han, and often engaged in armed clashes as public order broke down in the region. Many armed Hakka organized themselves under Hong Xiuquan in a village called Zijingzhen (351).
• After the force from the Qing government failed to disperse him in January 1851, Hong Xiuquan proclaimed the existence of a 'Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace' and crowned himself King. Over the next three years, they captured most of the South to Nanjing and established an quasi-imperial Christian theocracy (351).
• The Qing Empire fought a massive and devastating war to extinguish the Taiping Rebellion, eventually driving the Taiping out of most major cities by 1864 and slaughtering Hong Xiuquan's followers (351).
• The conversion of Hong Xiuquan to Christianity is remarkable considering that his only established contact with Christianity was 'Good Words to Admonish the Age' 劝世良言, a text created by the Cantonese Protestant pastor Liang Fa (351).
• Liang Fa's book was likely the only piece of Christian literature that Hong Xiuquan had access to until 1847, at which point he encountered an American Baptist missionary and obtained a copy of the Bible. The work by Liang Fa therefore contained the vast majority of the inspiration for Hong Xiuquan's movement (351-352).
• 'Good words to Admonish the Age' is a complex and haphazard text. It features a combination of scripture, essays about Christianity, and poetry. God the Father, called Jehovah, features prominently in the book, where the character of Jesus is nearly absent (352).
• Liang Fa's version of Christianity supplies a cultural and moral critique of China, especially against Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. He critiques Taoism and Buddhism for being focused on idols and meaningless rituals, whereas Confucianism ignores the importance of the eternal soul. He contends that before these religions, China worshiped Jehovah and that they need to be returned to this state (353).
• Whereas Liang Fa seems fine just claiming that the Chinese used to worship Jehovah, Hong Xiuquan writes numerous document attempting to 'prove' that the ancient Chinese worship of Shangdi 上帝 was actually Christianity (353).
• Liang Fa claims that the moral degradation of China requires the salvation provided by Jesus Christ to undo the corruption entrenched through other religious practices. The time scale provided by his work is unclear, however, and seems to imply that China's present corruption will be purified by Jesus in a coming apocalypse (354).
• The description of the apocalypse provided in 'Good Words to Admonish the Age', one preceded by portents of natural disaster and invasion, closely matching traditional Chinese notions of losing the 'Mandate of Heaven' following increasingly severe defeats and calamities (354-355).
• The apocalyptic ideas communicated by Liang Fa would have seemed familiar to both Confucians and Buddhists during this period, as the wrath of Jehovah matched up with the wrath of heaven in Confucian thought and the millenarian Buddhist belief that a nadir on Earth presage the apocalypse (355).
• Hong Xiuquan's notion of an earthly Kingdom of Heaven almost certainly derives from the interpretation of Matthew 19.23 by Liang Fa, in which Liang Fa uses language which describes the kingdom of heaven as a social or political institution rather than the spiritual connection of followers (355-356).
• Similarly, the terms for 'ordained by God' or 'sent by God' have a political connotation and imply semi-divine status. The meaning of these terms becomes closer to supernatural individuals specifically sent by God to rule than the priests sent to minister to congregations (357).
• The early writings and thought of Hong Xiuquan do not indicate an explicitly political goal, despite those implications in Liang Fa's text. Although the Taiping movement would later equate 'demons' with the Qing government, Hong Xiuquan interpreted his mission as ridding rural China of folk deities (357).
• Rather than firmly collecting all of his political aspirations during this period, Hong Xiuquan's vision propelled him towards a vague sense of personal purpose and duty, even though that purpose did not yet have a clearly political shape (358).
• In contrast to the writings of Liang Fa, who took an explicitly national concept of salvation in which nations declined as a whole, Hong Xiuquan advocated a personal concept of salvation, which denied many political aims and seemed to suggest that personal regeneration would heal the nation without revolutionary action (359-360).
• The early missionary work of Hong Xiuquan was heavily based on Confucian moralism as communicated in classical texts, and he appeared to draw several connections between certain elements of Confucianism and Christianity. He attacked, as sins, licentiousness, disrespect, homicide, and gambling, all common targets of Confucian morality (359).
• The Hakka were initially an ethnic group in northern China who gradually migrated south beginning in the 9th Century, mainly to Guangxi. In the 1600s and 1700s, large numbers of Hakka began leaving the hills of Guangxi for the Pearl River delta, placing economic and land pressure on Han groups in the area. Originally arriving in isolated areas, Hakka immigrant quickly established larger towns composed of extended families in corporate competition with other villages (361-362).
• Hong Xiuquan was from this Hakka community, borne in a village in a densely populated area of the Pearl River delta in Huada county. His village was composed of four extended families, with marriage connections to surrounding villages (362-363).
• Unlike the wealthy and well-connecting Hakka communities of the delta region, the Hakka villages of Guangxi were isolated and desperately poor. Guangxi was also populated by many other non-Han peoples, both in the mountain and valley areas. Feuding and raids between communities were common by the 1840s and the Hakka were at a disadvantage compared to better organized ethnic communities. The 'God-Worshiping Society' founded by Hong Xiuquan was a good way for the Hakka to organize at the same level as other ethnic groups (363-364).