Friday, December 30, 2011

How Luther Went Viral 5 Centuries Before Facebook and YouTube

Here's an interesting video link left in a comment box by PBJ:

Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral

The video highlights the use of the printing press as well as the failure of the Roman church to take Luther's protest seriously, much like a big company thinking, "why worry about something on the Internet?"




Some of my favorite works on this topic are from Reformation historian Steven Ozment. Protestants, The Birth of a Revolution presents an interesting look at the spread of the Reformation. I didn't find a free Google preview of it, but Amazon has "look inside" available (as well as used copies available for around 2 bucks). This is  a very readable and popular treatment of this subject.For a more detailed examination, Ozment's The Reformation in the Cities is available via Google's limited preview feature. This one is a little more expensive.

2 comments:

PeaceByJesus said...

And more people read exchanges here than it may appear, and our labor is not in vain if it is in the Lord.

James Swan said...

Thanks again for the link.