Chinese Religion General

What are the main differences between the Taoist denominations?

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>The Nestorian Stele is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 AD that documents 150 years of history of early Christianity in China.[1] It includes texts both in Chinese and in Syriac.

Well, Chinese Heaven worship isn't exactly "monotheistic": Shangdi (Heaven) is considered to be the supreme creator deity in some traditions, but his worship wasn't particularly widespread, because he was considered too remote and alien from humans to even hear their prayers. Shangdi essentially delegated all his power to the various gods of the "Celestial Bureaucracy", and it was these deities who attended to the human world and mortal affairs, as well as the daily running of the cosmos. Only the Emperor worshipped Shangdi directly, and it was usually only through one annual sacrifice that he did.

Second is that Shangdi (Heaven) essentially came to mean the entire collective of the Celestial Bureaucracy in later eras, similarly how Elohim in Hebrew used to refer to the entire heavenly assembly and not to one deity in particular.

So I wouldn't call it strictly monotheistic.

>Heaven worship
>monotheist

Judeo-Christians try to force these memes because they want god to be universal.

The Chinese worship, and still worship, absolutely a fuckton of gods. If you devoted your entire lifetime from tomorrow onward you still wouldn't be able to catalogue all of the vague river spirits and forest deities and spring gods and weather gods and ancestor worship crap in the south evolving over 3000 years.

Not a single part of it is monotheist and the emperors worshiped whoever the fuck they pleased depending on the era.

>>2284974
Tell me more about Chinese Christianity

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>>2285067

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>>2285067
The Triads are supposedly partly descended from the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, the heretical Christian movement that was the main force behind the Taiping Rebellion.