The Foundation underwrites three major publishing initiatives: The Templeton Foundation Press, a book publisher; Science & Theology News, a monthly newspaper; and Science & Spirit, a bimonthly magazine.

The Templeton Foundation Press

The world is not as bad as a lot of journalists seem to think it is,” says author and publisher Michael Reagan, “but the problem is that good news doesn’t sell.” The public’s preference for bad news, however, puts pressure on market-driven publishers to produce material that may be overly pessimistic.

The mission of the press is much broader than simply selling books. Joanna Hill, director of the press, puts it like this: “Our books serve a unique purpose—we look first to a book’s contribution and then to its profitability, providing perspectives and insights that might not make as much sense for a for-profit publisher.”

Reagan, whose book The Hand of God is one of the press’s major success stories and who advises the press, applauds the “delicate balance” that the press has struck, between profitability and contribution: “Sometimes you have to do things that are not necessarily going to make money but at the same time might have an impact.”

Established in 1997, the Templeton Foundation Press publishes ten to fifteen books a year in the areas of science and religion, spirituality and health, character development, and free enterprise. It is similar in some ways to a university press in that its purpose is to advance knowledge and support scholarship. It offers books aimed at scholars, but also general audiences and even children. Hill, who has guided many projects from conception into print, looks particularly for “books that are on the cutting edge of scholarship or represent innovative approaches to age-old challenges.”

Despite the focus on mission, the Templeton Press has not been without major successes in terms of sales. It has had great success with The Hand of God by Michael Reagan; with its books on spirituality and health, such as Spirituality in Patient Care and Parish Nursing; and with Worldwide Laws of Life by Sir John Templeton. Press books have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Korean, Japanese, and Czech languages. Its books are sold nationally and internationally through a team of more than thirty U.S. sales reps, as well as through distributors in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Overall, the Press is the leading publisher of books on science and religion in the world.

The Press also manages the online Science & Religion Bookstore, which offers almost 1,000 science-and-religion books from publishers around the world on a site designed to facilitate bibliographic research by scholars, libraries and general readers. Special research browsers allow readers to find books by topic, author, publisher or other categories.


For more information please visit: www.templetonpress.org