The shared center — held across the tradition
Shangdi is the one God, and the idols are demons.
Hong argued that the high God of the ancient Chinese classics and the God of the Bible are the same being, and that China had known him before the temples filled with anything else. Converts proved the point with hammers: smashing images was the entry rite.
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Hong Xiuquan is the second son of God.
Not Jesus and not a prophet — a younger brother, with a family relationship and a commission. Missionaries who reached Nanjing found a church that printed the Bible, kept the Sabbath and refused idols, and also held this, and they could not agree among themselves what to call it.
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