Most people think of October 31st as a day for trick-or-treating and dressing in costumes. And that’s partially true. But did you know there’s another calendar event on that same day? It’s called Reformation Day. October 31, 2024, marks 507 years since the start of the Protestant Reformation.

What’s the Protestant Reformation? To answer that, we need to travel back in time, all the way to the 1400s. A man named Johannes Gutenberg lived in a German city called Mainz. Historians don’t know much about him or what he looked like. But they believe Mr. Gutenberg invented the ancestor of the modern printing press.

Before Mr. Gutenberg’s invention, copying the Bible took about two years. Scribes copied out every single word by hand. Printing presses existed before Mr. Gutenberg’s time. But using them to copy books still took lots of time.

Printers carved words onto a large piece of wood, smeared the block with ink, and pressed paper onto the wood. Each page required a new block. Just one typo, and the printer had to start over.

Mr. Gutenberg invented a printing press with letters that could be switched around like Scrabble tiles. This method was called “movable type.” 

In 1455, Mr. Gutenberg printed a Bible. Before then, people depended on the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching about the Bible. Most couldn’t verify that the teaching was truthful. Soon, people could study Bibles on their own. That’s what led a lot of people to leave the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation. And it wouldn’t have been possible without Johannes Gutenberg. 

by Bekah McCallum in Duluth, Georgia

Why? The Gutenberg printing press made it possible for people all over the world to have Bibles of their own.