Christian bookstores in the Montreal region report that while the sales of Da Vinci-related books geared to believers have been good, these have been dwarfed by the much brisker sales of the smaller booklets and evangelistic tracts that were obviously being distributed to the public at large. Rather than dealing with the background debates and the Gnostic controversies, both the books and the tracts tend to become academic listings of historical errors in a book that the world at large and the secular media have already understood to be intended as fiction. The church is responding to questions that nobody seems to be asking.
“The Christian church needs to be careful not to continually get sidetracked, reacting to the agenda which the media sets,” cautions Dr. Richard Topping, minister at the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul in Montreal. “The book is basically a good yarn, and I think most people see it as that. Rather than get all tense about responding to it and its historical inaccuracies, we need to get busy catechizing people.”
Jones would agree. He was reticent when first asked to write a book debunking the historical claims of The Da Vinci Code, because to him, the book remains first and foremost a work of fiction. However, he believes the book has helped to highlight the strong and growing interest in pagan spirituality, which is what Christians should be addressing much more than the fanciful historical claims of the book.
Emerging Church leader Brian MacLaren believes the book may have served a purpose beyond highlighting the pagan undertows in our culture. In a May 2006 interview with SOJOMAIL, MacLaren said he thought “a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown's version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church's conventional version? Is it possible that even though Brown's fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church's conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?”
Whatever these differing perspectives about Jesus, there was a point when the church considered them, debated them and opted against them. Unfortunately, we have tended to overlook them and teach the historical development of Christianity as a series of motions accepted by debateless councils without opposition. We typically describe the early development of our faith as a series of resoundingly unanimous declarations and creeds gradually shaping our beliefs into what they are today. It is important not only to remember that there was debate and controversy along the way, but also to remember why a given perspective emerged as the accepted orthodox position. This approach allows us to welcome new questions and challenges to our understanding of our faith because debate is no longer something to be feared, but the tool God has used to bring our Christian faith to the point it is today.
How peculiar that while the church complains of a lethargy and disinterest in religion and spirituality in the population at large, a work of fiction which many literary critics agree to be of dubious quality at best sweeps to the top of the bestsellers list and remains there for months because of a continued interest in Jesus and the origins of Christianity. Wouldn't it be the greatest of ironies if the current generation, intrigued and attracted by the vision of a fresh and living radical Jesus that emerges from controversy and debate, were to find Him without the church? It seems that in spite of the church-growth wisdom of the day, teaching a little more history of Christianity in the pulpit might not be such a turn-off for seekers. And who knows, it might just be good for the Christians too.
