Liberty University now has its own university press. The evangelical institution, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1971, announced that it has started 'a full-service publishing company' whose list will be a blend of scholarly books and general-interest works. The more academic titles will go through standard peer review, according to the university. In an interview with The Chronicle, Liberty's provost, Boyd C. Rist, said the university had talked about having a press for years.
'We've now reached a size and a maturity as an institution where a university press made sense to us,' he said, 'not only in terms of the fact that it puts the university's brand out there in the larger scholarly and evangelical community, but it gives many on our own faculty and other evangelical scholars across the United States a publishing venue that may not be available to them with more traditional publishing venues.' Submissions are open to anyone, but Rist expects that 'what we would publish will be consistent with the biblical and theological views of evangelicals across the United States.' The university expects that most submissions will be from writers with 'a broadly evangelical perspective,' the provost said.
