Roland Boer

Roland Theodore Boer (born 1961) is an Australian theologian and scholar of Marxism. He was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2014.

Career

Boer obtained a bachelor's degree in divinity from the University of Sydney. He was a professor at University of Newcastle (Australia). In 2004, he founded the peer-reviewed academic journal The Bible and Critical Theory.

In 2018, he was described by Xinhua as one of the world's top experts on Marxism. He teaches at the Dalian University of Technology's School of Marxism.

He runs the blog Stalin's Moustache.

Notable works

Political Myth: On the Use and Abuse of Biblical Themes

Political Myth: On the Use and Abuse of Biblical Themes was released in 2009. It examines the political narratives that emerge from the Hebrew Bible on the political right and provides a framework to critique those narratives from the political left.

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel, released in 2015, examines the intersection of economics and religion in ancient Israel through the lens of Marxist critical theory.

The Criticism of Heaven and Earth

The Criticism of Heaven and Earth is a series of books which explores the intersection of Marxism and religion. The fifth book in the series, In the Vale of Tears: On Marxism and Theology V, was released in 2012. In 2014 it was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners

In Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners, released in 2021, Boer describes Gordon G. Chang's The Coming Collapse of China (2001) as an example of the "China doomer" approach to historical nihilism. Other examples cited by Boer include anti-communist tropes and atrocity propaganda, as well as "betrayal" narratives in which Deng Xiaoping is cast as a "traitor" who supposedly undid the achievements of China's revolution and brought capitalism to China—Boer characterises these as historical nihilism.