Religion and Printing: From the Gutenberg Bible to the Order of Service

The first major book to come off a printing press in Europe was a Bible. Religious print hasn't stopped since, and most of it takes a form we still produce today: not bound volumes, but booklets.

The First Printed Book Was Scripture

Johannes Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, produced in Mainz around 1454–1455 in roughly 180 copies, was the book that proved a printing press could reproduce a serious text accurately and at scale. Everything that followed in European print, religious or otherwise, traces back to that first run. See our History of the Printing Press for the fuller story.

Scripture in English

Vernacular translation is what actually spread religious print to ordinary readers: Tyndale's English New Testament in the 1520s, Luther's German Bible in 1534, and the King James Version in 1611, produced by the royal printer Robert Barker. Martin Luther's 95 Theses, printed and circulated from 1517, spread faster than almost anything printed before it — an early demonstration of how quickly a printed idea could travel once the technology existed to reproduce it cheaply.

Most Religious Print Is a Booklet

Strip away the theology and most everyday religious print — hymn books, prayer books, order of service sheets, parish newsletters — is the same physical object: a short, bound or folded booklet, printed in a run sized to one congregation or one occasion rather than a mass edition. That's precisely the product category we print every week, just usually for a different occasion.

Where This Shows Up in What We Print

Funeral orders of service are, in physical form, exactly this kind of religious booklet — hymns, readings and prayers set out for a congregation, printed for one specific service. Our order of service copyright guide covers what can and can't be reproduced from hymns and scripture, and our funeral & memorial printing hub covers the booklets themselves. For church, parish or community group booklets more broadly, see our booklet printing range.

Frequently asked questions

What was the first major printed book?

Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, produced in Mainz around 1454 to 1455 in roughly 180 copies.

Can hymns and scripture be printed freely in an order of service?

It depends on the material — most hymns are covered by a church's CCLI licence, but poems and readings generally aren't. See our copyright guide for the detail.

Do you print religious or parish booklets outside of funerals?

Yes — hymn sheets, order of service booklets and parish newsletters use the same wiro-bound, perfect-bound or stapled formats as our general booklet printing.