Paternoster Press is a British

Christian publishing Christian media, sometimes referred to as inspirational, faith and family, or simply Christian, is a cross-media genre that features a Christian message or moral. Several creative studios and mass media formats are considered to be aspects of C ...

house which was founded by

B. Howard Mudditt B is the second letter of the Latin alphabet. B may also refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Astronomy * Astronomical objects in the Barnard list of dark nebulae (abbreviation B) * Latitude (''b'') in the galactic coordinate syste ...

(1906–1992) in 1936. Mudditt was a

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

clerk who decided to move into publishing after seeing the many publishers based on London's

Paternoster Row Paternoster Row was a street in the City of London that was a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Paternoster Row was described as "almost synonymous" with the book trade. It was part of an area cal ...

during his lunch hours; the firm was named after the street, and also alluded to the

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

.Summerton 2010 The ''

Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'' described Paternoster as "a synonym for scholarly, evangelical Christian publications." Mudditt led a

Plymouth Brethren The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and non-conformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where they originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes ...

assembly in Walthamstow, a north-east suburb of London. Through this and other connections, Mudditt formed relationships with many religious scholars who then published in Paternoster, including

F. F. Bruce Frederick Fyvie Bruce (12 October 1910 – 11 September 1990), usually cited as F. F. Bruce, was a Scottish biblical scholar who supported the historical reliability of the New Testament. His first book, ''New Testament Documents: Are They ...

H.L. Ellison Henry Leopold Ellison (July 10, 1903 Krakow, Poland – July 10, 1983 Dawlish), usually cited as H. L. Ellison, was a biblical scholar, professor, missionary, speaker, and author in the 1900s. His parents were Leopold Zeckhausen and Sara Jane ...

, George H. Lang, and I. H. Marshall. In its early decades, Paternoster collaborated with other publishers, including Inter-Varsity Fellowship (later

Inter-Varsity Press Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) was previously the publishing wing of Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. It support the publishing or distribution of well over one million books each year to over 150 countries, including the translation ...

) and the American firm

Eerdmans William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company is a religious publishing house based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1911 by Dutch American William B. Eerdmans (November 4, 1882 – April 1966) and still independently owned with William's daughte ...

. Paternoster began with the publication of a children's magazine, ''Horizon'' and followed with another magazine, ''The Harvester'',Paternoster Press Papers and a regular evangelical booklet, ''The Emergency Post''. Also among Paternosters early works were a periodical, ''Science and Religion''. In 1956, Inter-Varsity Fellowship sold the periodical, ''Evangelical Quarterly'' to Paternoster. Another significant publication was the '' New International Greek Text Commentary'' of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

, coedited by I. Howard Marshall, W. Ward Gasque, and Donald Hagner and published with Eerdmans. Later authors publishing in Paternoster include Tim Grass and

Harold Rowdon Harold may refer to: People * Harold (given name), including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name * Harold (surname), surname in the English language * András Arató, known in meme culture as "Hide the Pain Harold" Arts a ...

. In the 1990s and 2000s, the publisher also presented a series of noted academic monograms: ''Paternoster Biblical Monographs'', ''Paternoster Theological Monographs'', ''Studies in Christian History and Thought'', ''Studies in Evangelical History and Thought'', and ''Studies in Baptist History and Thought''. ''Paternoster Biblical Monographs'', a series in the Evangelical tradition, broadly defined, won praise for the high caliber of its scholarship.Squires, John T., "Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile These Concepts", (book review) ''

Review of Biblical Literature The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), founded in 1880 as the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, is an American-based learned society dedicated to the academic study of the Bible and related ancient literature. Its current stated mis ...

''. 2007, Vol. 9, p480-483. Paternoster relocated to

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

in 1962. In 1975, Mudditt's son, Jeremy, became managing director and in 1976 was joined by

Peter Cousins Peter Tendai Cousins (born 3 March 1981 in Harlow) is a British judoka, who competed at the Olympic Games. Judo career Cousins came to prominence after becoming champion of Great Britain, winning the middleweight division at the British Jud ...

. In 1992 it was purchased by the Christian book distributor

Send the Light Send the Light (STL) was a British Christian book distributor which had absorbed other Christian publishers and bookshops, and eventually merged with the International Bible Society to become one of the largest non-profit book distributors in t ...

as part of their ''Authentic Media'' division based in

Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city and the largest settlement in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was over . The River Great Ouse forms its northern boundary; a tributary ...

, and moved to

Carlisle, England Carlisle ( , ; from xcb, Caer Luel) is a city that lies within the Northern English county of Cumbria, south of the Scottish border at the confluence of the rivers Eden, Caldew and Petteril. It is the administrative centre of the Cit ...

. Paternoster's imprints include Regnum (an academic list) and Rutherford House (a popular historical list); it also publishes books with specific imprints for organisations such as WEF (

World Evangelisation Fellowship In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

), YWAM ( Youth with a Mission) and

Spring Harvest Spring Harvest is an inter-denominational evangelical conference and gathering in the United Kingdom that started in 1979. The festival arose in the late 1970s at a time when evangelicalism was growing in the UK and there was uncertainty as to ...

. In December 2009, as part of the failure of STL (

), Paternoster was sold to Australian-based company

Koorong Koorong is a Christian bookstore chain operating across Australia. It is the largest retailer of Bibles, Christian books and media in Australia. Koorong currently operates online and at 14 stores across the country. History Koorong began as a f ...

, which, prior to this, was primarily a retailer of Christian books, music and gifts.

References

Sources

*Grass, Tim
FF Bruce: A Life
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012. *Neil Summerton
Jeremy Mudditt
Brethren Historical Review. (2010) Vol 6: P 122-125 *Ten Harmsel, Larry, and Reinder Van Til
An Eerdmans Century
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2011.
Paternoster Press Papers, Administrative History. ELGAR: Electronic Gateway to Archives at Rylands
The University of Manchester Library Collections, Manchester, UK. {{Authority control Christian mass media companies Christian publishing companies Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom Publishing companies established in 1936