Michael Bourdeaux, the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism, and the Defense of Religious Liberty, 1959-1975

Abstract

In 1969, Anglican priest Michael Bourdeaux and his colleagues established the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism (CSRC) - later Keston College - which is often mentioned as playing an important role in drawing attention to religious believers in the Soviet Union. Yet, its role has thus far not been analyzed extensively. This article considers the role played by Bourdeaux and his colleagues on the “religious front" of the Cold War, both before the establishment of the CSRC and in its early years. A historical contextual analysis of Bourdeaux's portrayals of internal church conflicts in the USSR in the 1960s indicates that his work occasionally reinforced a dichotomous conception of the Soviet Christian ‘other' as either sufferer or collaborator. The article argues that from 1959 to 1975, an ever-increasing westward flow of Soviet samizdat from religious believers allowed Bourdeaux and his organization to disseminate largely accurate information about human rights violations in the Soviet Union to a wide audience of journalists, scholars, and Christian churches in the West.