The Marxism and Theology Project
Political Theology Today is proud to announce that one of our Contributing Editors, Roland Boer, is the winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2014. The prize is "awarded for a...
View ArticleHow to Understand China: Study Marxism
This is the first of a series of five articles on understanding China today. The articles cover politics, economics, culture and religion, since all of these are important for making some sense of what...
View ArticleCalvin’s Institutes: A Primer for Militants?
Parts of the world tremble again at religiously inspired revolutionary activity. Too easily do we forget that very similar forms of such activity have appeared in earlier periods of time, even if the...
View ArticleChinese Democracy?
This is the second of a series of five articles on understanding China today. The articles cover politics, economics, culture and religion, since all of these are important for making some sense of...
View ArticleHong Kong Protests: A Disservice to Christianity in China?
This is the third of a series of five articles on understanding China today. The articles cover politics, economics, culture and religion, since all of these are important for making some sense of what...
View ArticleThe Confucian Conundrum: Harmony or Hierarchy?
This is the fourth of a series of five articles on understanding China today. The articles cover politics, economics, culture and religion, since all of these are important for making some sense of...
View ArticleStalin, Affirmative Action and the Pentecost of Language
It has become increasingly clear that the Soviet Union was the first ‘affirmative action’ state in human history.[1] A basic plank in the program of the Bolsheviks was the right for every people and...
View ArticleWhy a Marxist Entrepreneur is not a Contradiction in China
This is the fifth of a series of articles on understanding China today. The articles cover politics, economics, culture and religion, since all of these are important for making some sense of what is...
View ArticleReligion: Idealism or Materialism?
From a Marxist perspective, is religion an idealist or a materialist phenomenon? Is it secondary or can it be a primary feature of human existence? The initial answer seems obvious: it is idealist and...
View ArticleThe Bible and the Soviet Constitution of 1936
The 1936 Constitution of the USSR contains two biblical verses: ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work’. The first is clear...
View ArticleReligion in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
I recently made my first and overdue visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Perhaps my greatest surprise was the presence of churches. That experience set me thinking and...
View ArticleGlimpses of a New Human Nature: Stalin and the Enthusiasm of Socialism (Part 1)
These are new people, people of a special type (Stalin, Works, vol. 14, p. 90). Marxists have tended to prefer a Pelagian rather than an Augustinian view of human nature. Human beings are inherently...
View ArticleCan a Religious Person Join the Communist Party?
Can a religious person join the communist party? One would expect that the answer would be a resounding ‘no’. Is not Marxism a materialist philosophy and political movement, with no time for the...
View ArticleOn Communist Faith
‘Keeping the faith’ is a common slogan that appears from time to time in socialist circles, especially during tougher times. Usually, it is invoked when a small, marginal party seeks to call on the...
View ArticleThe Theological Nature of Purges
The idea and practice of a purge has become so tied up with political processes that it is worth recalling that it also has distinct theological resonances, indeed that it is highly translatable...
View ArticleMarx’s Grave: The Comradeship of the Dead
Thrice have I visited Marx’s grave. First time, happenstance On a Sunday in 1999, in the midst of a northern hemisphere summer, I was for the first time in England, let alone London. What should one do...
View ArticleMalaria in the Ancient World
Life in the first centuries of the common era in Judea and Galilee was short and sharp, characterized by “frequent pregnancy and sudden death.”[1] The evidence is rather sobering.[2] Apart from...
View ArticleThe Soviet Light to the Nations (Roland Boer)
As part of a longer study concerning Stalin’s extensive use of biblical imagery, texts and indeed interpretation (to the point of key biblical texts becoming part of the Soviet Constitution of 1936), I...
View ArticleThe Farce of “Freedom of the Seas”– On the South China Sea (Roland Boer)
On 12 July, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague made a non-binding ruling concerning the Law of the Sea. The former regime of the Philippines (under Aquino) had made a unilateral...
View ArticleThe Bible and the Soviet Constitution of 1936
The 1936 Constitution of the USSR contains two biblical verses: ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work’. The first is clear...
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