“How Technology Helped Martin Luther Change Christianity”

I recall a survey of historians (two or three decades back, I think) that ranked Johann Gutenberg as the most influential man in history because of his invention of printing with movable type.  It made books relatively cheap and the dissemination of ideas much easier.  It gave plausibility to William Tyndall’s famous vow:  “I defie the Pope and all his lawes. If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than he doust.”

I doubt that even the Internet will surpass the invention of movable type as a revolutionary technological innovation, though it’s somewhat parallel.

Here’s a brief piece on Martin Luther as an early-sixteenth-century media star:

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/20/502437123/how-technology-helped-martin-luther-change-christianity

By the way, I’ve always gotten a kick out of Johann Tetzel’s fiendishly clever marketing slogan for papal indulgences:  “Sobald das Geld im Kasten klingt, die Seele in den Himmel springt!” (roughly, “As soon as the money in the collection box clings, the soul into heaven springs!”).  For sheer, shameless commercializing of the gospel, it probably outdoes even such audacious scoundrels as Peter Popoff.

Posted from Atlanta, Georgia