They never said the monk was god they worship him because of his Buddhist teaching, and what he did for their community, and I don't see anything wrong with it.
The original form of Buddhism as taught by Sakyamuni was an atheistic philosophy designed to reduce stress (I'm paraphrasing here.) However, humans have a tendency to deify, which is what we have in Chinese Buddhism.
They used to do that with black people too, the ones they'd put on the porches holding the lanterns, except they didn't use Gold, they shrunk them and used plaster or concrete instead.
