Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture Volume 4, Issue 1 (2015) https://jrmdc.com http://jrmdc.com Peter Horsfield From Jesus to the Internet: A History of Christianity and Media (Chichester, UK: WILEY Blackwell, 2015), 336 pp. Hardback £60.00 (US $105.00), Paperback £21.99 (US $34.95) ISBN: 978-1-118-44738-3 http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118447387.html Reviewer: Stefan Gelfgren, HUMlab, Umeå University (Sweden) This is a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time, and I find it both enlightening and thought provoking in a positive sense. The book represents a way of writing the history of Christianity in a rather novel multi-perspective and contextualized manner. Technology, politics, economics, demographics, and scientific discoveries all play a role in how religion is transformed – but at the center of this transformation, according to Horsfield, is media. While this approach appears to have much to offer, the aim to write a multidisciplinary book covering the 2000-year multifaceted history of Christianity, and thus rewriting our understanding of both Christianity and media, might open one up for critique – as Horsfield himself points out. Critics of this approach might (rightly) point out that perspectives or events might be underrated or overestimated according to different experts within the different fields, that the Christian faith, its doctrines, and its institutions might be misinterpreted, and so on. Nevertheless, this kind of all-encompassing book is important in 156 Downloaded from Brill.com06/15/2020 08:48:51AM via free access