Occupying much of imperial China's Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire.<p><b>Thomas H. Reilly</b> is associate professor of Asian studies at Pepperdine University.<p>"A significant contribution to the understanding of the Taiping cause, the problems of indigenization of Christianity in any culture, and the difficulties attendant upon any and all cross-cultural exchanges." <i>-Journal of Asian Studies </i>