Christians and technology

Michael Haykin  |  Features  |  history
Date posted:  1 Dec 2016
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Christians and technology

Hal MacBain

Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not averse to change.

Many of them, for example, have been eager to embrace new forms of technology for the sake of gospel propagation.

The printing press Reformation

Martin Luther (1483–1546) and his fellow Reformers, for instance, capitalised on the printing press that had been invented in the previous century by Johann Gutenberg (c.1396–1468). Trained as a goldsmith, Gutenberg began to experiment in the 1450s with movable metal letters that could be rapidly put together to form the text of a page, and then broken down to be reassembled for the next page. Books could now be produced more rapidly than the medieval method of copying by hand. The printing press not only enabled faster production of books, but they were also cheaper, and far more accurate. Within a short period of time there were printing firms in German, Swiss and Dutch cities, such as Nuremberg, Cologne, Geneva and Amsterdam.

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