February 19 2001

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Less than a century after Johann Gutenberg invented movable type, John Calvin remarked that the presses in Geneva were able to produce copies of the Bible and his Institutes of the Christian Religion so rapidly that they could be shot out as ammunition. Calvin understood that simple advances in technology could put the full force of the divine Word at the disposal of every individual, so he dispatched emissaries throughout the countryside to distribute Bibles as well as his own writings.

Martin Luther also understood the power of the press, which he used to propagate his evangelical ideas throughout Europe. At Luther's behest, Albrecht Dürer developed a form of engraving that would enable him to communicate relatively complex doctrines in the form of easily accessible illustrations, thereby harnessing technology to the service of the gospel.

In addition to Dürer's woodcuts illustrating biblical themes and evangelical theology, Protestants also put evangelical lyrics to existing tunes, which they printed and dispensed to the masses. In England, people took songsheets like these and made them into a primitive form of wallpaper that, once again, heralded the gospel—even from the bedroom walls.

Centuries later, the Canadian ...