Is it coincidence that the Protestant Reformation, the first mass revolt against the Roman Catholic Church (I’m not counting the Great Schism between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic in the 11th century), came not long after the invention of movable type in the West (again, not counting its invention and application centuries earlier by the Chinese and Koreans)? I’m looking for material to cite, but I know that at least a few historians see the ability to distribute lots of relatively inexpensive printed materials as one of the greatest challenges to Catholicism’s control over religious information in Renaissance Europe.
The democratization of Christianity in 19th century frontier America (when unschooled, uncouth Methodist and Baptist country preachers challenged the hegemony of the old guard Puritans, Unitarians and Episcopalians) was connected to the rise of both the mechanized press and of local papers. Anyone, it seemed, could publish a periodical, and soon just about everyone was reading them.
How will–how is–the Internet transforming religion in the world today? Will blogs, email, Google, YouTube, SecondLife and other forms of technologically-enhanced social networking and user-generated content so change the religious landscape that we’ll have a hard time recognizing it in a generation or two?
I’m seriously considering switching my thesis topic to focus on the intersection between technology and social change and religion. I’m going to be thinking out loud here for the next little bit. I welcome any thoughts you all might have on the subject.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Meg // Jun 14, 2007 at 11:48 am
Sir John! A few cornerstone sources to investigate (and cite) on the impact of print (and changing technologies of the written word) on religion and other cultural/social institutions. (I have an obnoxiously long annotated biblio of most of these, if it’s of use…):
Elizabeth Eisenstein – _The Printing Press as Agent of Change_ (or any of her other works)
Adrian Johns – The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making
Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin – The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800
Roger Chartier, ed. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe (orig. 1987).
Marshall McLuhan – the Gutenberg Galaxy (or other works on technology and media)
Sorry I can’t point to sources on more recent material (i.e. post-Renaissance & Reformation)… But if you need medieval, just ask!
2 Elaine Frei // Jun 14, 2007 at 12:20 pm
What an interesting topic, John. When I was at university and taking a class in Reformation History, I did a paper on the role of printing in the Reformation. Sadly, that was several years ago and the paper got lost somewhere in between here and there so I don’t have any suggestions for you on where to look for information on the question in that historical era.
But I will look forward to your possible continued “thinking out loud” on the subject. For the current iteration of technological change, by the way, I would point out that there is a lot of speculation over on the Ex-Mormon site I check in on sometimes concerning whether or not the existence of the internet has made it easier to leave the church for those determined to do so, considering how much easier the ‘net makes it to find both information and like-minded individuals. I imagine the same would be true for those trying to leave other religions - or for those trying to find a religious system that fits them, for that matter.
Also, the question of how much the Internet is exacerbating the culture wars in such areas as the evolution/creation/ID debate is very interesting to me. Can that be connected up to other changes, for example, what was going on in information technology around the time of the Scopes trial? I don’t know if that sort of question is within the scope of what you are thinking of, but it just popped into my mind as possibly related.
But I’ll stop now.
When I used to tutor, one of my specialties was working with students on things like brainstorming ideas for papers, and it sort of happens spontaneously sometimes.
3 Kevin // Jun 14, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I’m sure you know a ton more about the Reformation than I do but I just wanted to add that the spread of Martin Luther’s works and ideas was partly due to his writing in German (the language of the everyday man) as well as in Latin (academic lang.).
btw: Hi John!
4 Paul Martin // Jun 15, 2007 at 11:14 am
I’d like to think that the ability to blog translates into entrance into the “marketplace of ideas” but I’m frankly not so sure - at this juncture, at least,it appears otherwise going by what I’ve learned from my own extensive writing and blogging.
My experience, to start, was one of writing a book with a real sense of vocation behind it and one for which my qualifications could hardly have been better. I finished the work through unusual adversity, making the total elapsed time 25 years to completion!
I ended up running across this sentence in Literary Market Place in 2004: “If you are submitting a nonfiction book proposal without a marketing platform {meaning some degree of preexisting public visibility) you are wasting your time.” After two years of systematic but fruitless effort, with my proposal/manuscript returned untouched by trade publishers and agents, I’ve gone ahead with it despite having proved LMP’s point.
But I’ve done enough research to know that the odds of my book being read by much more than family and friends are extremely low. Despite the solid endorsments I managed to obtain via my extremely limited ability to get anyone of any note to take a look at what I’ve done, most of the reading public won’t know the book exists. The marketing and distribution just aren’t there without a trade publisher.
Anyone can put a book on Amazon.com - more and more people are doing that - but hardly anyone will know it’s there if you’re out there on your own. Eighty five percent of books are still sold in brick and mortar stores, which don’t stock books that aren’t put out by trade publishers.
It’s similar, I think, with blogging. I’ve been at it for I guess close to three years with one blog or another related to my interests but have no sense that I’ve contributed to religious thought in our time any more than I’ll be able to with my book. It isn’t possible to rise to prominence simply through quality of thought and writing. The playing field not only isn’t level: it’s like being down on a plain facing the Rocky Mountains!
Heavy duty marketing and distribution stand squarely behind persons of public note, even when such persons produce work of low to mediocre quality - I think, for example, of Madonna or Jane Fonda’s expertise in the realm of spirituality and religion. That’s because publishers/multimedia conglomerates are focused squarely on increasing the size of profit margins. And where do you get the most bang for your marketing buck? From known writers, even when they’re “writers.”
Within the blogosphere itself, I’ve noticed that more and more prominent blogs - the ones where you’d really like to be able to leave your URL in the hope of bringing some attention to your work - don’t allow that. Being pretty much left to visiting one small personal blog at a time from your own small personal blog ends up representing, to say the least, a limited opportunity to reach readers.
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