God Worshipping Society

The God Worshipping Society (simplified Chinese: 拜上帝会; traditional Chinese: 拜上帝會; pinyin: Bài Shàngdì Huì) was a polytheistic and nationalistic popular-religious movement founded and led by Hong Xiuquan under the influence of Protestant Christianity and combined it with Chinese folk religion, based on the faith in Shangdi ("Highest/Primordial God"), 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 claimed to have 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, Shangdi, and was the younger brother of Jesus Christ who had been directed to rid the world of demon worship (Qing dynasty)."