Enigmatic Mirror
Salt Press and the Maxwell Institute have announced that Salt Press will be merged with the Maxwell Institute.
http://www.maxwellinstituteblog.org/salt-press/
(Inexplicably, Dan Peterson–who was a member of the Salt Press editorial board–was not invited along with other Salt Press editors to serve on the Maxwell Institute’s new “Mormon studies editorial advisory board, which will assist with manuscript solicitation and book acquisitions.”)
Everyone seems happy about the new arrangement. I suspect, however, that the Salt Press crew will eventually discover their absorption into the bureaucratic behemoth of the Maxwell Institute and the necessary loss of their independence may be a high price to pay for greater marketing visibility. At any rate, Salt Press has produced some interesting books in the past, and I hope they will continue to do so in their new avatar.
On the other hand–there always is an “on the other hand”–this merger clearly represents further evidence of the intentional distancing of the new Maxwell Institute from the earlier academic focus of classic FARMS. Believe it or not, there are limited editorial and financial resources at the Maxwell Institute. When they choose to publish one book, they necessarily choose not to publish another book. Committing themselves to publishing an entire book series on “Groundwork: Studies in Theory and Scripture” will mean they will necessarily be publishing fewer (no?) books on the classic FARMS “ancient research and Mormon studies.” It is ever harder to take seriously the claim that the new direction of the Maxwell Institute does not entail a conscious repudiation of the old.
My suspicion is that “studies in theory and scripture” may have a more limited audience than Since Cumorah or Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. But I may be wrong.
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