The Taiping Vision of World Salvation

Abstract

This chapter examines the soteriological vision of the Taipings. Hong Xiuquan’s vision of world salvation was not only the core of the Taipings’ theological worldview, but also the ideological foundation of their revolutionary crusade against the Qing dynasty. As Hong’s beliefs about the salvation of the world were based on a series of religious visions that he had experienced in 1837, some historians have uncritically dismissed his ideas as the product of a psychotic disturbance. Moving away from this “psychological” interpretation, the analysis of this chapter shows that the Taipings’ core soteriological beliefs were the product of vernacularized Christian texts (in particular, the Chinese Bible) encountering an individual of Hong’s socio-cultural background. By carefully analyzing the content, development, and sources of the Taipings’ vision of world salvation, the chapter confirms that it was a localized response to specific terms and themes from the Chinese Christian literature.