Reverend Canon Dr Michael Bourdeaux (1934-2021)

The Reverend Canon Michael Bourdeaux – founder of Keston College, later the Keston Institute – was a frequent visitor to the Russian Centre’s Monday Seminars in the 1970s and 1980s, both as audience-member and participant (the latter particularly in a series on The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchev). Along with the Centre’s own Archie Brown, Michael Kaser and Alex Pravda, he was invited – as part of a panel of experts on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – to attend a Chequers seminar chaired by Margaret Thatcher in September 1983.

The full Keston obituary of the Reverend Canon Dr Michael Bourdeaux can be found here (first paragraph reproduced below): https://www.baylor.edu/kestoncenter/index.php?id=977472

Reverend Canon Dr. Michael Bourdeaux
Keston Founder
March 19, 1934 – March 29, 2021

The Reverend Canon Dr. Michael Bourdeaux passed away peacefully in the early hours of Monday, March 29, during Holy Week. An Anglican priest, he founded Keston College in 1969 and dedicated his life to God’s call to be a “voice for the voiceless” of those enduring religious persecution. For his work, Canon Bourdeaux received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1984, joining such notables as Mother Teresa and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in accepting the award considered to be the Nobel Prize for religion. He completed his memoirs One Word of Truth in time for Keston’s 50th-anniversary commemoration and served on Keston’s Council of Management until his retirement in January 2020 although he remained as Keston President until his death.

Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre