Okay, I admit it, I haven’t read the Da Vinci Code, but I have become familiar with its basic thesis — that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, that the church has been covering this up for a millenium and a half, and so forth. Since I teach western civilization classes, am more or less “out” as a Christian in a vigorously secular environment, and am also the official faculty adviser to the PCC chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ (hah, bet you wouldn’t have guessed that!), I’ve been asked perhaps a dozen times by students about the truth of the Da Vinci Code. I am now cheerfully sending them to this Christianity Today webpage which contains a variety of excellent articles on the book. The best article is this one, which makes a fine case for the book as a tiresome updating of the Arian Heresy.
Am I willing to judge what I haven’t read? Sure. In this age of pop culture overload, we have no choice but to rely on each other to reliably relay to us what we need to know about things we haven’t got the time or the energy to engage, be they books or films.
What’s frustrating is that I’ve heard more than a few people spreading the word that this bozo “mixes history and fiction” and so they believe this crap…UGH!
Read it. Waste of time. Started as a good escape/murder mystery/thriller but ended rather limply. Trouble is, there was enough that sounded historical; those who read it will now “know” that the early church simply “muscled” in the belief that Jesus was divine. Appeals the most base and juvenile tendencies in all of us to believe that those in authority must be wrong, there must be a consipracy and the truth is really hidden in a web of deceit. Yech.