太平天国毁灭偶像政策的由来及其影响

THE ORIGIN OF TAIPING HEAVENLY KINGDOM'S POLICY OF DESTROYING IDOLATRY AND ITS INFLUENCE

为了确立独尊上帝的局面,太平天国严禁偶像崇拜,并由此掀起了一场狂飙式的毁灭偶像运动。在起义立国初期,太平军一直处于流动作战的状态,因而毁灭偶像的声势不大,波及范围有限。建都天京和进军苏杭后,该运动相继形成了两个高潮。洪仁（王干）、李秀成对该激进政策稍有意见分歧,主张对庙宇寺观禁而不毁,但无力左右局面。因此,该政策便与太平天国的兴亡相始终,成为太平天国对待偶像崇拜的一个主导政策。然而,此举并不具有破除迷信、排斥一切神灵的意义,其实质依旧是在造神,区别仅在于以一神替代了众神。尽管它在初期极大地改变了太平军的精神面貌,但其所孕育的宗教激情最终仅是泡沫现象。另一方面,由于该政策既有悖于国情民心,同时又过于简单粗暴,所以民间始终没有心悦诚服地接受上帝信仰,相反,却在心理上拉大了与太平天国政权之间的距离。此外,该政策带有很强的盲目破坏性,致使以江南为主体的宗教建筑和名胜古迹蒙受了一场空前浩劫。

To create a situation in which God was solely worshiped, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom adopted a policy of forbidding idolatry which resulted in a formidable campaign to wipe out all the idols. At the initial stage of uprising and in the early days of the Kingdom, Taiping Army was always in constant operations and the campaign was not in its full swing. But after the Kingdom's capital was established in the City of Nanjing and its Army moved forward to take Hangzhou and Suzhou, the campaign reached its climax. Generals Hong Rengan and Li Xiucheng did not entirely agree on this radical policy, maintaining that the temples should be banned without being destroyed, but they were not in the position to control the situation. Hence, the policy,as the key policy for the Kingdom to deal with idolatry, played a dominant role through the rise and fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Anyhow, the policy did not produce any significance of exterminating superstition and rejecting Apiritual gods. Its essence was nothing but the creation of God. Something distinctive of the policy is that it created only one God to replace gods. Though at the initial stage of the uprising it did a lot to uphold the morale of the Taiping Army, in the final analysis, the religious enthusiasm it impregnated turned out to be a bubble phenomenon. Due to the fact that the policy at once violated the traditional Chinese cultural conventions and was practised in too simple and rude a way, ordinary Chinese people never heartily accepted the belief in God. On the contrary, they kept themselves quite apart from the regime of the Kingdom, psychologically. Aside from the above-stated, the policy was blind deconstructive so as to bring devastation to the ancient buildings and temples in the southern part of China.