God Worshipping

The God Worshipping Society (拜上帝教) was a religious movement founded and led by Hong Xiuquan which drew on his own unique interpretation of Christianity and combined it with Chinese folk religion, faith in Shangdi, and other religious traditions. According to historical evidence, his first contact with Christian pamphlets occurred in 1836 when he directly received American Congregationalist missionary Edwin Stevens' personal copy of the Good Words to Admonish the Age (by Liang Fa, 1832). He only briefly looked over and did not carefully examine it. Subsequently, Hong had supposedly experienced mystical visions in the wake of his third failure of the imperial examinations in 1837 and after failing for a fourth time in 1843, he sat down to carefully examine the tracts with his distant cousin Feng Yunshan, believing that they were "the key to interpreting his visions" coming to the conclusion that he was "the son of God the Father and the younger brother of Jesus Christ who had been directed to rid the world of demon worship."

In 1843, Hong Xiuquan, a Hakka school teacher and failed imperial examinee, became convinced that he was the son of God the Father and the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The next year, Hong and Feng Yunshan, Hong's distant cousin and one of the earliest converts to Hong's faith, traveled to Sigu, Guiping county, Guangxi to preach their version of Christianity. In November 1844, Hong returned home without Feng, who remained in the area and continued to preach. After Hong's departure, Feng traveled deeper and deeper into the heart of the Thistle Mountain region, preaching and baptizing new converts. Feng christened this group of believers the "God Worshipping Society." Hakkas from this area, generally poor and beset by both bandits and local Chinese families angry at the presence of the Hakka in their ancestral lands, found refuge in the group with its promise of solidarity.

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