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.
For example, some 6,000 different pamphlets were published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, of which some 1,700 were editions of a number of works by Luther. His The Freedom of a Christian (1520), which is a succinct summary of the heart of Luther’s teaching on justification by faith alone, came out in 18 printings over these six years. Luther’s translation of the entire Bible (1534), or portions of it, appeared in an astounding 430 editions during his lifetime. The Lutheran Reformation was from the first the child of the printed book. Luther himself described printing as ‘God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the gospel is driven forward’.
The gospel by radio
For the next three centuries, evangelical Christians used the press to great advantage to spread the message of the gospel to the nations. Things changed dramatically in the 20th century when the first wireless voice broadcast, on 24 December 1906, included a rendition of O Holy Night and a reading from Luke 2. Nine years after electronic broadcasting was licensed in the United States in 1912, the first on-air Christian message was transmitted by Westinghouse’s KDKA station, carrying a church service from Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 2 January 1921. Within a relatively short period of time, a multitude of national and local religious radio programmes appeared and radio broadcasting quickly established itself as a favoured medium of communication among Evangelicals.
Hal MacBain
Some older Christians had a deep distrust of the radio when it first appeared, though. Grace MacBain (1882–1962), a vibrant Canadian Baptist who lived in Toronto, noted in her diary that through the medium of the radio ‘the stage had invaded the home’ and poured ‘muckish love songs and sentimental ditties’ into the minds of people. She was thus convinced that she should avoid getting a radio, which also meant that she would not ‘lose some of the time I have for reading and studying the Bible.’ For Grace, the radio was deeply problematic, for it brought the world into the home.
However, her son, W. Hal MacBain (1916–2016), an important evangelical leader who played an instrumental role in the creation of the nation-wide Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, saw the great potential of this new medium of communication as a way of multiplying the outreach capabilities of his church in Sarnia, Ontario: it would take the gospel out into the world. And for a passionate Evangelical like Hal MacBain this was critical. As MacBain noted in the introduction to the very first 30-minute broadcast that he made on 16 December 1951 in the city of Sarnia, Ontario, he was endeavouring through these broadcasts ‘to lead our whole community [of Sarnia] into a deeper appreciation of God and his wonderful work in the world through Jesus Christ his Son.’
The 30 minutes were carefully planned, with hymns and gospel songs sung by his church’s choir, a poem read by his wife Mamie and a short message preached by Hal. The programme was broadcast from 8:30 to 9:00 pm on a Sunday evening. The broadcast proved to be so popular, though, that the programme was moved to 7 o’clock and the whole evening service of MacBain’s church was broadcast. Thus Pastor MacBain preached the gospel of grace through the radio with as much assiduity as Luther had used the printing press.
