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5 The Taiping Legacy and Missionary Christianity A fter the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1864, the victorious Qing imperial government moved quickly to eªace all memory of the Taiping and their challenge to empire. Only one aspect of the Taiping legacy survived, and that was its connections to missionary Christianity. Yet it would not be the Protestants who would suªer most from this association,but the Catholics,the Heavenly Lord sect,since they were the only form of missionary Christianity present in the provinces at this time. During the era of proscription, the Heavenly Lord sect was regarded more as a heterodox than alien creed. The authorities identified the sect with native Chinese heterodoxies. This perception changed with the Opium War and consequent treaties.Beginning with theTianjinTreaty (1858), which legalized the practice of the Heavenly Lord sect outside the treaty ports,Chinese o‹cials moved the Heavenly Lord sect from the o‹cial category of illegal and heterodox, identified with native sects, to that of legal and heterodox, identified with foreign ones. The circumstances of theTaiping Rebellion called into question the wisdom of establishing this new legal status for the Heavenly Lord sect.Indeed, the rebellion radically changed the o‹cial assessment of the sect as peaceful , although heterodox. Catholic sectarians were now regarded as more threatening to the status quo than Buddhist sectarians. During the rebellion , Chinese o‹cials and gentry began to view the Heavenly Lord sect (and in time, Chinese Protestants as well) as a challenge not only to the political status quo, but also as a threat to the entire Confucian and imperial order. In one gentry-sponsored tract (examined at length later in this 150 chapter), Chinese o‹cials and gentry accused the Heavenly Lord sect of embodying every imaginable evil of sectarian heterodoxy,from moral turpitude to political rebelliousness. This change in the o‹cial attitude toward the Heavenly Lord sect was wholly a result of the sect’s identification with theTaiping rebels.Moreover, the hostile reaction of gentry and o‹cials to the Heavenly Lord sect during and following the rebellion underscores their fear of the Taiping restorationist appeal and hatred of its iconoclastic message. While Hong Xiuquan’s call to return to the classical religion echoes Matteo Ricci’s earlier call, Ricci had never attacked the imperial institution as blasphemous, and he had never advocated a return to the political institutions of the classical period. Ordinary reference to the Taiping rebels in government documents was made by the terms Yuefei (Guangdong/Guangxi bandits) or changfa fei (long-haired bandits).When the documents did identify the rebels beyond this, and especially when they sought to specify the source of the Taiping religious doctrines,o‹cials and gentry observers alike associated them with the Heavenly Lord sect. Reports from Wuchang, Nanjing, Yangzhou, and Suzhou all describe the Taiping religion as being of the sect.1 For example , this description of the Taiping religion comes from an account written during the occupation of Suzhou: Amidst the rebels [zei] is practiced the religion of the Heavenly Lord. It is the same as that practiced by the Western barbarians. Every seventh day they worship,at which time they chant a twenty-eight line hymn whose first line reads, “Praise be to the High Heaven.” The third line reads, “Praise be to the Heavenly Father.” The fifth line reads, “Praise be to the Heavenly Elder Brother [Tianxiong].” This Tianxiong is the barbarians’ so-called Jesus.2 The pointed description of the Heavenly Lord sect as originating with the Western barbarians and resulting in the Taiping sect was everywhere assumed in official accounts. The identification between the two groups was a matter of course,given the similarity of the Heavenly Lord and Taiping teachings. For example, The Taiping Legacy and Missionary Christianity 151 in his chapter on the religion of the Taiping, Zhang Dejian, chief of intelligence for the loyalist general Zeng Guofan,devotes almost as much attention to the Heavenly Lord sect as to the Taiping, even providing a brief history of the coming of the Heavenly Lord sect to China with the Western missionary Li Madou (Matteo Ricci). A gentry account of the fall of Wuchang describes how, soon after the Taiping scaled the walls, they began propagating such teachings as the Heavenly Father’s creation of the earth, hills, and rivers in seven days and seven nights. The observer concludes that “it is all trusting...

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