Marxism, religion and the Taiping revolution

Title: Marxism, religion and the Taiping revolution
Creator: Boer, Roland
Relation: Historical Materialism Vol. 24, Issue 2, p. 3-24
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-12341472
Publisher: Brill
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2016
Description: This study offers a specific interpretation of the Taiping Revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not only the largest revolutionary movement in the world at the time, but also one that was inspired by Christianity. Indeed, it marks the moment when the revolutionary religious tradition arrived in China. My account of the revolution stresses the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the Taiping revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of economic and social relations. After providing this account, I raise a number of implications for Marxist approaches to religion. These involve the revolutionary religious tradition, first identified by Engels and established by Karl Kautsky, the question of political ambivalence of a religion like Christianity, and the distinction between ontological and temporal transcendence.
Subject: Taiping revolution; Marxism; religion; radical religious tradition
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1326537
Identifier: uon:25458
Identifier: ISSN:1465-4466
Language: eng
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