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Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion

The function of religion in China's rich history of popular rebellion has within the past decade or so increasingly captured the attention of scholars in a number of disciplines. Although most of this new-found enthusiasm has been focused on White Lotus sects, two recent monographs by Rudolf Wagner and James Cole demonstrate that, previous works on the subject notwithstanding, inquiry into the role of religion in the Taiping Rebellion can still yield fruitful results. Reenacting the Heavenly Vision contains the most imaginative explication of the Taiping religion to date. Arguing against commentators who see the rebel leaders as self-serving charlatans, the author substantiates their sincerity by showing that their search in Western and Chinese materials for independent confirmation of the validity of Hong Xiuquan's dream was undertaken not to convince skeptics, but to assure themselves that their mission was indeed Heaven sent. Once they accepted the vision as a revelation of God's will, their task was to translate its symbolic scenario into action. The vision, Wagner contends, served the rebels well until they established their capital at Nanjing, but there it failed them. Its promise that the demons (the Manchus) would be subdued once the Heavenly Kingdom was founded had all too obviously not been fulfilled. With no further guidance from the original dream and few fresh revelations from God, the rebel leadership lost its drive and direction. The Taipings' rigid adherence to the vision, the source of their initial strength, had become their greatest weakness since it precluded flexible responses to the problems besetting their rule. "[T]he vision," the author concludes, "was responsible for both the success and the demise of the rebellion" (p. 5).