Letter from the Chairman
Keston never fought in the Cold War, yet we were in the frontline reporting on the battle, telling countless stories of the heroic resistance of believers to persecution and betrayal (sometimes by Christian leaders both in their own churches and in the West). Recent exploration of the Stasi archives by Canon Michael Bourdeaux, founder and now President of Keston, has revealed that the East German government considered us to be one of their most important ideological opponents: they mistakenly thought Keston was founded in response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and that we were a large international organisation with a network of branches. Canon Bourdeaux found evidence that the East Germans were watching us closely: the Stasi archives contained some hand-written notes by a visitor to Keston in 1977 and by someone who had attended a 1985 Keston conference.
It is not surprising that our role has changed significantly since the collapse of communism. The miracle is that we have kept going for so long. However, circumstances, not least financial, have now brought us to a radical reconsideration of our role in the future.
Keston has a good track-record of publishing: we produced a series of Keston Books, the Keston News Service (1974-1991 and revived 1995-2002) as well as our magazine Frontier and our journal Religion in Communist Lands (founded 1973 and renamed Religion State and Society after the fall of communism). We have produced a solid body of research and most recently our Encyclopaedia of Religious Life in Russia Today in eight volumes (in Russian) due to be completed in the spring of 2008. Now, however, such publishing is no longer sustainable. The future of Religion State and Society was secured in June 2006 when Keston transferred the rights of this journal to Taylor and Francis, the journal's publisher.
I have been working with the Council to forge a new vision for Keston and to define our role in the 21st century - it is now 18 years since the Berlin Wall came down. We know that Keston has an important legacy from the period when it had reports almost weekly in the church or national press. This legacy is embodied in Keston's archive, which is unique in the world. It is extensive and comprehensive, covering all former communist countries in one way or another - after all, in the early 1980s we had over 20 staff and our researches led the world. The large staff of those early days shrank gradually during the 1990s until over the course of the last two years, owing to financial constraints, the few remaining staff either left or sadly had to be made redundant. The Council of Management decided that, in its straitened circumstances, Keston must concentrate its resources on preserving the archive.
The archive contains many examples of heroism, texts which will one day become spiritual classics. By collecting material on all religions and Christian denominations during the communist period, Keston created a source of exceptional value for future church historians and for all those who recognise the importance of the 20th century religious witnesses in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: they defended freedom of mind and spirit in the face of a political system which claimed total control over all aspects of human life. They and their message must not be forgotten.
As Keston had to leave its Oxford premises in November 2007, the trustees explored a number of locations in the UK and Europe as a new home for Keston's archive and library. The search was long and laborious. Most of the institutions approached were unfortunately not willing to house both the library and archive because they either did not have the space or the money, or both. In other cases either the proposed premises or the financial terms were not acceptable to Keston's trustees.
Baylor University in Texas, USA approached Keston in the autumn of 2006 and three of their academic staff then made a presentation to the Council of Management in December of that year. Baylor wished to establish a new Keston Center for Religion Politics and Society which would carry on the mission of Keston into the 21st century, and would offer a new home to the archive. This new centre would be part of an existing institution - the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies - which is devoted to the study of church-state relations in the areas which concern Keston, and which has a body of research students already engaged in study within Keston's field. In February 2007 Michael Bourdeaux and I went out to Baylor to explore their proposals further and after careful thought and consultation with the other trustees came to the conclusion that the best solution - and one which had been approved by the Charity Commission - would be for Keston to accept Baylor's offer.
On 24 March 2007 an Extraordinary General Meeting was held in London at which I spoke at length about the many approaches made to institutions in the UK and Europe and about the problems the trustees had faced. Michael Bourdeaux then spoke about the importance of Keston's archive which had been "the heartbeat of all the work we have ever done" and how Keston had "contributed to world history and shown that during the second half of the 20th century religion in Eastern Europe played a major role. This history can only be told in the future through Keston's archive." After lengthy discussion with the Keston members who attended the EGM, a proposal was put to the meeting that the library and archive be placed at Baylor, on terms to be negotiated by the Council. The vote to accept the proposal was unanimous.
After some weeks of negotiations with Baylor, the Council of Management at its meeting on 21 June 2007 signed a contract with Baylor in which Keston's collection of books and documents were given to this university to form the basis for the new Keston Center for Religion Politics and Society. In August 2007 the collection was moved to Texas where it is now being managed by Baylor library staff who have all the expertise to hand for its conservation and maintenance. Conservation is particularly important because some of the most important items in the archive are samizdat documents which were produced on very poor quality paper, and are inevitably deteriorating. The library has a department devoted to digitising and plans to get much of Keston's material onto the Internet. Keston will be represented on the governing body of the new Keston Center at Baylor, and at Keston's Annual General Meeting on 3 November 2007 Keston's Articles of Association were amended to allow the Director of the new Keston Center to join the Council of Management. Collaboration between Baylor and Keston will be close and based on regular communication.
On 27 and 28 November 2007 Baylor celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies and the opening of the Keston Center for Religion Politics and Society. Michael Bourdeaux, his wife Lorna, and I were invited to attend the celebrations and were impressed by the new premises which now house the Keston archive. Malcolm Walker, Keston's former archivist and librarian, was also able to be present for the celebrations and spent a month at Baylor helping sort out some of the archive for the new Center. We were very sad to bid him farewell after his many years of loyal service at the end of November when his employment at Keston (UK) came to an end. Michael, Lorna, Malcolm and I were able to attend the first Board meeting of the new Keston Center and take part in discussions on its future development. We look forward to welcoming the new Center's Director, Dr Christopher Marsh, to meetings of our Council of Management.
This new development, however, does not mean that Keston will cease its activity in the UK. Keston will continue to promote the goals for which it was founded in 1969. It will monitor the future use of the library and archive, complete the ten-year project to produce the Encyclopaedia of Religious Life in Russia Today covering all aspects of religion in contemporary Russia, continue to produce a newsletter for Keston members, it will manage its current finances, provide scholarships for researchers to work in the archive, arrange annual study days or lectures on subjects within Keston's field of study, sponsor conferences and publications which promote the purposes for which Keston was founded, and undertake such other activities as are possible within the resources available in keeping with Keston's objectives.
I would like to thank most warmly all those who continue to support Keston Institute and its work.
With best wishes,
Xenia Dennen
Chairman, January 2008.
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Xenia Dennen, Chairman of the Keston Institute.
Members of the Encyclopaedia team (left to right)
Roman Lunkin, Xenia Dennen, Sergei Filatov,
on a fieldtrip to Saratov, November 2007
Dr Christopher Marsh, Director,
by the entrance to the Keston
Center for Religion Politics & Society
First Board meeting of the Keston Center at Baylor
(photograph taken by the Director, Dr Christopher Marsh)
Michael Bourdeaux shows
Baylor University's Provost
round the new Keston Center
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