The Practice Of The Taiping Religion

The Taiping heavenly kingdom movement,from 1853 to 1864,swept the most part of China.And the research on the Taiping heavenly kingdom as well as its faith is almost as old as the history of the movement.Since the 1980s,the domestic study of the Taipings came into silence.By contrast,the research on the religion of Taiping heavenly kingdom in this period started to get into the right track.But,most of the former researches focused on the doctrine,did not fully reflect the complexity of the Taiping heavenly kingdom movement.In addition,people tend to account the Christian elements in the Taiping religion into the framework of Chinese-western binary opposition,underestimate the position and value of Taiping religion for the Chinese society.This research expected breakthrough contradictions and entangled on the theme of doctrine,explain the Taiping religion through practice,and understanding Chinese belief characteristics through the Taiping religion,And even the social situation in modern China.Practical activity is very complex,it doesn’t have a completely tight,and stable logical rules,but shows as a practical pattern.Hereby,this research chose the time,space,events,gender,and text to describe the practical pattern of the Taiping religion.And furthermore,this research will put the practices of the Taiping religion into the indigenization of Christianity,explore the possibility of "role replacement" for the Taiping religion and Christianity.Firstly,as the source of the Taiping religion,the doctrine and practice of Christianity contain a very important time structure,the Sabbath Day.This time structure who is full of ritual sense,was inherited by the Taiping religion.The paradox is that the Taiping religion got the Bible from protestantism missionaries,but it accepted the Sabbath doctrine of the old testament in the end.And in the process of practical application,the Taipings also made an error on the calendar.The first chapter focuses on the daily life of the Taiping Army and tries to reveal the essence of the Taiping Religion from the practical perspective.The practice of worship is just as important to the Taiping Army as the faith of worship.As the main actors of the Taiping Religion,ordinary soldiers always have their own practicing modes of worship.Therefore,the difference between practice and faith is a key to the nature of the Taiping Religion.The second dimension to understand the practice is space.The Heavenly Father hall is the core religious space in the buildings of the Taiping heavenly kingdom,and its functions of space from the aspect of religion,expanded to the political,military,life and other fields.Through a sketch of the field of Worship day,it obtained a sense of presence.In addition,the second chapter investigated the opposite of the worship field-the idol field.How did the traditional,local gods response to the threat from the Taiping army,actually reflect the attitude of local society to the Taiping army and their faith.But,no matter what attitude it is,and no matter where the Taiping Army is,they will build a high platform to preach.This is their main way of missionary work.In the past,most people only focus on the universality and practicality of preach,but failed to find out that the practice of preach also make complementary doctrines to the Taiping Religion.In the context of the Taiping religion,these is another sensitive topic,which is gender.Religious belief has difference in gender,so learning the religious view of women will also improve our knowledge about a religion.The Taiping religion roughly inherited the female view of Christian,advocated the equality of men and women on the spiritual.But in the field of practice,according to the influence of morality,Customs,mentality,and the concept of women of Hongxiuquan,the difference in gender is very sharp.As a spectator,the record about the female camp of the Taiping Heavenly kingdom from Wang demen and Chen zuolin help us to understand the living state of the women in the religious field of the Taiping heavenly kingdom.In the influence of the linguistic turn,distinguishing the tendency of a word or text is the basic of all the historical research.Therefore,the fourth chapter choose the text of the Chinese examination as the object,aiming to find out the difference between the examinations of Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly kingdom.Firstly,the experience of imperial examination reflects the choice and obsessiveness of the intellectuals to the high official positions and riches.The Taiping Heavenly kingdom also attract the folk intellectuals by this way.The text of the Taiping examinations contains the core doctrine of the Taiping religion,therefore,it is a local way to preach the doctrine of Taiping religion.The difference between the texts of examinations of Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly kingdom,originate from conflict of their different ideological background.For this reason,turning an intellectual in faith is more difficult than turning a civilian.The daily questions and religious concern which a civilian need to face are more realistic,therefore,he is tend to accept a practical hybrid religion.This also reminds us that the identity of "Other",which belonged to the Taiping religion,could be ease in daily,local situation.Through the marks of time,space,gender,and text,the practice of the Taiping religion can be located in its position.It will help us to observe the Taiping religion from the angle of events.Tianjing is symbolized as a mirror of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,which involves in the progress that God-worshipers get and internalize their self-identity.As the symbol of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,Tianjing is a mutual intersection of the ideal and the reality of many people,ranging from the Heavenly King to the ordinary Taiping soldiers.Therefore,how to understand the historical status of Tianjing and distinguish between the reality and the reflection of it determines our acquaintance and estimate of the entire history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.The establishment and the fall of Tianjing,served as the representative events,are the direct acting factors of the Taiping religion to uphold its authority.Vice versa,for the Qing dynasty losing and regaining Jinling also plays a vital important role to maintain its political legitimacy and control the official ideology.What’s more,from the perspective of general event,this chapter served hunger as the theme,to examine the effectiveness of the Taiping religion to solve the problem of daily affairs.These effects will continued to impact the belief in god.Until the fall of Tianjing,hunger and destroy eventually join together,this is the ending of the Taiping religion.The Taiping religion is a unique form of faith,the practice of it,to a certain extent,broke the long-standing distinction between Christianity and Chinese society.At the same time,the Taiping religion is also a mirror,help us to pay attention to the social situation of the Chinese life at that time.In addition,as a modern western concept,"Religion" actually cannot fully apply to China’s historical and academic context.Therefore,we can neither place the Taiping religion in "Chinese religious"or Christian belief system;and also cannot ignore the differences between the Taiping religion and the western concept of "religion",while the western concept of"religious" shall be relativized,and turned to rediscover "the Chinese religion",and the particularity of Chinese society.Questions about what is a "Chinese religion",it is hard to get a definite answer.But the research on the Taiping religion,can at least conclude a judgment:in the history of modern China,there had been the exist a real,practical,and sinicized Christian.From the Angle of practice,the compound character of the Taiping religion is not a bad thing,on the contrary,it makes the Taiping religion become a convenient and practical form of belief and ceremony system,so as to give legitimacy to the taiping heavenly kingdom’s behaviors.