The Real History of the End of the World (28 page)

According to these reports, given over several states and years, the Pilgrims believed in a primitive life of constant penitence and fasting in anticipation of the end. They wore bearskin wraps; it's not clear if they wore anything under them. They ate gruel from a communal pot without spoons or forks and lived in rough huts or a tent.
³

Starting out from Woodstock, Vermont, the group wandered from place to place, hunting for the perfect location in which to await the coming end and picking up converts along the way. They were generally greeted with astonishment and often disgust. They reportedly were forbidden to wash, change their clothes, or cut their hair or fingernails. When they arrived at the Shaker village of New Lebanon, New York, the official scribe wrote that “particularly the females were by traveling & fasting, reduced to great weakness . . . and the whole company were very dirty & filthy.”
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One of the Pilgrims, Fanny Ball, later wrote of her belief that “God was now about to establish his kingdom on earth.”
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The Mummyjums passed into Ohio, now dressed in patchwork clothes and mismatched shoes. In Xenia, they were again lodged by Shakers, who did not succeed in converting, or even bathing, them. By now the Pilgrims numbered about fifty-five people, including a former minister, Joseph Ball, and his wife. Fanny.
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Semistarvation, penitential self-punishment, and lack of good personal hygiene seem to have caught up with the Mummyjums at this point. Several died of smallpox, malaria, and malnutrition before they reached their final destination in Arkansas Territory. The Reverend and Mrs. Ball left the group at New Madrid, Missouri. Some of their family later joined the Shakers. Ball eventually admitted that “Isaac Bullard was the most terrible impostor that ever trod American shores.”
⁷
But for a time, both he and Fanny had believed that Bullard was the key to their salvation.

On one of the stops the Mummyjums made on the Missouri River, a local sheriff, who had heard about the condition of the children in the group, brought a boatload of food for them and had to hold off the adults with his sword while the children ate.
⁸
What happened to the children after the sheriff left is not recorded.

Eventually deprivation and the failure of Christ to return caused most of the Mummyjums to leave the group.

Isaac Bullard ended his days sometime after 1824. Two women remained with him at least until that year, living in a hut on the Mississippi. A visitor offered them safe passage back to their families but neither would abandon Bullard.

The Mummyjums may have been only a tiny group in the midst of less radical millennial movements. However, Isaac Bullard's spiritual descendants are men like Jim Jones and David Koresh, who incorporate personal charisma with apocalyptic fears to control followers who follow them even to their deaths.

1
F. Gerald Ham, “The Prophet and the Mummyjums: Isaac Bullard and the Vermont Pilgrims of 1817,”
Wisconsin Magazine of History
56, no. 4 (1973): 294. Ham quotes from the Shaker records as well as several contemporary newspapers.

2
Op. cit.

3
A letter by the Reverend Ira Chase, printed in
The American Baptist Magazine and Missionary Intelligencer
new ser. 1, no. 9 (Boston, 1818): 1, describes an encounter with the Mummyjums in upstate New York.

4
Quoted in Ham, 295.

5
Op. cit.

6
Ham, 297.

7
A letter by Joseph Ball, printed in
Woodstock Observer
1, no. 6 (1820): 1.

8
Ham, 298.

There is a somewhat strange peculiarity distinguishing these
insurgents. The accounts received from Mr. Meadows describe
them as Puritanical and even fanatic. The whole army pray
regularly before meals.

—Letter to the earl of Clarendon, 1852
¹

 

 

 

 

T
he story of Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly Kingdom, and the attempt to create a heaven on earth in Nanjing, China, has often been portrayed as a classic example of Christian proselytizing gone wrong. If only the missionaries hadn't come to China, people said, the tragic rebellion would never have occurred.
²

Maybe, but as we have seen with the Yellow Turbans, there was a strong millennial trend in Chinese popular religion.
³
If Hong hadn't heard of Christianity, he might have based his beliefs on Daoist or Maitreyan Buddhist or even Manichaean popular religions. He did draw on all of those traditions, but it was the chance receipt of the Christian tract, a nervous breakdown, an inexplicable dream, and his resentment at the failure to pass a Confucian government test that came together to create the Taiping Rebellion.

Hong, the leader of the Taiping, was born in a village in Guandong (Canton) province in 1814. His family were farmers and Hakka, rather than native southern Chinese. The Hakka had been in the area for two hundred years but were still considered an outside group. The family were doing well enough that Hong Huo Xiu, their youngest son, was able to go to school. He excelled there and was bright enough to pass the qualifying exams that permitted him to go to the city of Canton to take the civil service test. Passing this would allow him to become a government official, something that would bring honor and a better life for his family.
⁴

While in Canton in 1836 to take the test, someone in the street gave him a pamphlet of excerpts from the Old and New Testaments along with exhortations to become a Christian. This was one of the many tracts written in Chinese by Western Christian missionaries. It was called “Good Words for Exhorting the Age.” Hong didn't read the pamphlet then. He took the test and failed.
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Hong tried at least three times to pass the test with no success. In 1837, after his third failure, he fell ill and had to hire a sedan chair to carry him home. When he arrived home, he took to his bed, believing that he was about to die. Over the next month he drifted in and out of consciousness, during which time he had a number of dream visions that he didn't understand.

The account of these visions was told to a missionary, Theodore Hamberg, by Hong's cousin, Hung Jen-Kan. “Hung Jen-Kan was an educated person who lived with Hung Hsiu-ch'uan [sic] during the period of the illness and afterward; he was in sympathy with the rebellion, but his account shows that he regarded his cousin as insane.”
⁶

The visions, which continued off and on over a period of days, began with one that derived from traditional Chinese symbolism. Hong saw a dragon, a tiger, and a cock. All three of these can be seen as symbols of strength and victory, especially the dragon in its representation of “the
yang
force of the east, the strength of sun and light.”
⁷

Hong seems to have felt that he was being taken through the Chinese version of hell, as described in the Buddhist-inspired
Jade Record
.
⁸
After passing through the underworld, Hong was carried in a sedan chair to a beautiful palace. There he met an elderly woman, who took him to a river and washed him clean of defilement. He was then given a new heart and finally brought before an old man, who was dressed in black with a flowing golden beard. The man told Hong that he was sad because, although he made humans and provided them with sustenance, they didn't worship him but, “take my gifts and worship demons.”
⁹
He warned Hong not to be like them.

The old man gave Hong a sword to kill the demons, a seal to overcome evil spirits, and golden fruit to eat. He then led Hong to a place from which he could see the iniquities of the world. He told Hong that he must fight against this evil. “Do thy work: I shall assist thee in every difficulty.”
¹⁰

At this point, it is said that Hong woke enough to tell his parents that a “venerable old man” had promised him power and wealth. They put him back to bed.

As his vision continued, Hong was told to drive the demons out of the thirty-three levels of heaven. Confucius was blamed for their entry into heaven, and Hong had the satisfaction of seeing the sage soundly whipped for it. With the help of the old man and his middle-aged son, Hong drove out the demons and was given the title Taiping Heavenly King, Soverign Ch'üan of the Great Way (
T'aip'ing T'ien Wang ta-tao chün-wang Ch'üan
).
¹¹

During this vision, Hong apparently leapt from his bed, slashing the air as with a sword, shouting “Slay them, Slay the demons!” He also told visitors that he had just become emperor of China and preferred them to use his title. If they refused, he called them demons.
¹²

Hong remained in this state for forty days. He finally recovered enough to resume his studies. At that time, he said, he hadn't read the Christian pamphlet. It was only after his fourth and final attempt to pass the exam in 1843 that he began to read it.

“Good Works for Exhorting the Age” was written by a Chinese convert to Christianity named Liang Ah-fa. The work consists of parts of the Bible, not given in order. It begins with the Gospel of John followed by Paul's letter to the Romans, Ecclesiastes, and then Genesis. Added to this are commentaries and essays by Liang containing more biblical citations. These are more concerned with the role of Jehovah, rather than Jesus. Liang also seems to have implied that the Heavenly Kingdom was both heaven and the congregation of the faithful on earth, something that Hong would attempt to realize.
¹³

When he came to read the “Good Works” carefully, Hong's visions became clear to him. The man with the golden beard was Jehovah, and the middle-aged man, his son, Jesus. By reading the many places that the character for his name “Huo” appeared, he realized that God was not only speaking to him, but that he was the second son of Jehovah, sent to earth to rid it of demons. The sword had been given to him for this purpose. With it he would create a new age of great peace (Taiping). The Heavenly Kingdom would be in China, not Jerusalem.
¹⁴

It is not surprising that his friends and neighbors were not convinced by his logic. However, he did find some followers, including his cousin Hung Jen-Kan and another relative, Feng Yuen-Shan. In 1844, they decided to go to the Hakka region of Guangxi to preach. There they had much more success. Calling themselves the “God Worshipers,” they preached moral standards of behavior from the Ten Commandments, adapting them to include the prohibition of drinking, gambling, and smoking opium. The last was particularly important. Opium had been introduced by the British to the Chinese a few years before and was a major problem in China. The Opium Wars had begun in 1839 and were still going on at the same time as the Taiping Rebellion.

The Hakka living in Guangxi had suffered from the war, crop failure, and bandits. The new religion gave them hope. Hong and his friends made thousands of converts. In 1845, Hong returned to his teaching job in his village, but Feng stayed to continue the work in Guangxi. He was apparently a charismatic preacher and the movement continued to grow.

Up until this point, Hong had been relying on the original pamphlet from Canton to form his theology. In March 1846, he and Jen-Kan went to Canton, where they met an irascible fundamentalist missionary named Issachar Jacox Roberts. Hong studied with Roberts for a couple of months and was about to be baptized when, apparently through a misunderstanding, Roberts decided that Hong wasn't ready.
¹⁵
Despite this, Roberts and Hong remained friends and, when the Taiping had taken the city of Nanjing, Hong invited the minister to join them.

In August 1847, Hong returned to Guangxi, where things were going well. Feng had almost two thousand converts. They even included landholders who had money to help support the movement. The group grew bold enough to destroy idols and paint slogans on temple walls. This brought them to the notice of the authorities, and eventually Feng was jailed.
¹⁶

Hong went to Canton to negotiate for Feng's release. While he was gone, a new twist developed among the God Worshipers. One of the converts, Yang Xiu Qing, a Hakka charcoal burner, fell into a trance during which God the father, spoke through him. On his return, Hong accepted this as a true connection to the divine. Later, Yang would become one of the kings under Heavenly Kingdom. A few months later, another convert began channeling the Elder Brother, Jesus, who sent messages to Hong and the faithful, including the information that Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, also lived in heaven.

After this the trances came thick and fast for a while, along with omens and prophecies of military victory.
¹⁷

By 1850 these prophesies seemed to be coming true. The God Worshipers, now several thousand strong, had met the forces of the local government in battle and won. They now controlled Guangxi. In 1851, after winning more battles, Hong declared the arrival of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace and named himself the Tien Wang (heavenly king). Over the next two years, the Taiping army moved across China. Although they had some defeats, they won many of their battles, gaining followers along the way, until, by 1853, their force was reported to be over half a million.
¹⁸

In March, the Taiping took over the city of Nanjing, where Hong announced that the Heavenly Kingdom would be established. The God Worshipers are told that it is from here that they will be saved when the Apocalypse comes.