Abstract
Readers seeking a brief history of China's Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) might be attracted by the title of this book, but they should look elsewhere. This latest contribution to the voluminous scholarship on China's best-documented rebellion is not a narrative history with the usual attention to social and political context. It is instead a rambling essay on Taiping religious beliefs and practices, designed to demonstrate “the uniquely Christian character of the movement” (p. 11). Thomas H. Reilly is particularly intent on explaining the implications of the Taiping term for God: Shangdi. The first two chapters of the book explore prior Catholic and Protestant debates on the proper term for God, Shangdi having been rejected by Pope Clement XI in 1704 in favor of Tianzhu (Lord of Heaven) but later accepted by most Protestant churches. Early Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci and the Taiping favored the use of Shangdi because the term helped to link their God to ancient Chinese textual references to a supreme deity.
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