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.
Hong's monotheism is not a straightforward import and it is a mistake to read it as one. His argument was philological: the classical Chinese texts name Shangdi, a high god who receives sacrifice from the emperor alone, and Hong claimed this was the God of the Bible, worshipped in China before the temples filled with images. That claim let him present the movement as restoration rather than foreign religion, which mattered enormously for recruitment among Hakka villagers who had no reason to want anything Western. The practical expression was iconoclasm: converts smashed shrines, and the first serious violence between God Worshippers and their neighbours in Guangxi was over broken images.
All people under Heaven are of one family belonging to the Heavenly Father, the Supreme Ruler, the Lord God-on-High. Nobody should keep private property.
The Land System of the Heavenly Kingdom, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. de Bary and Lufrano, 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 224-226Published in translation by Columbia University's Asia for Educators programme.
The same ground, other faiths
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