accessAtlanta

'The Da Vinci Code': Christians debate film, book's plot

The book has been ripped by the Vatican and the film version panned at Cannes, the French film festival. On Friday, movie audiences, including the more than 40 million who have read the novel, will get their own crack at "The Da Vinci Code."

Dan Brown's mega-selling novel has become a pop culture phenomenon that has stirred up storms all over the world. The controversy, in fact, has been more widespread than Columbia Pictures' own publicity for the movie: The backlash has become the hype.

(enlarge photo) Cover of the paperback edition of 'The DaVinci Code.' by Dan Brown. Read reviews of 'The Da Vinci Code' movie

Because of its elaborate theory that much of Christian church history is a cover-up of the marriage of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, there has been talk of Christian boycotts and "teachable moments," dueling Web sites, debunkers and supporters.

The observant may notice a few small but significant changes intended to make the film more palatable to its detractors, even though the movie follows the book's plotting about 98 percent of the time. The hero, professor Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, is more skeptical about the theories that have bothered many Christians, and he challenges them. The movie also adds a brief speech in which Langdon says he is a Christian.

That doesn't mollify Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, who has called for a boycott.

"The more subtle it is, the more attractive it becomes," he said of the script changes. "This is an anti-Christian book that rips out the whole tradition of Judeo-Christianity by the roots."

Others see it as a chance to talk about their religion. "I can do a class on early Christian history and 50 people will show up, but when I did a class on 'The Da Vinci Code' 500 people showed up, and I talked about the same material," said Sam Candler, dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta.

No protests are expected in Atlanta, but there have been demonstrations and legal challenges as the movie opens in Asia. Censors in Thailand ordered the last 10 minutes of the movie cut, then later reversed their position.

Published in 2003, "Da Vinci" has been on The New York Times best-seller list ever since and has 60 million copies in print in 44 languages, making it the biggest-selling adult fiction, hardcover novel in history.

It also has generated dozens of books explaining and debunking Brown's blend of historical fact and fiction. "Da Vinci" claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a daughter, that early Christians believed Jesus to be mortal, and that the fourth-century church voted to declare Jesus divine and de-emphasize his relationship with Mary to oppress women. It also claims a secret society that once included Leonardo da Vinci has guarded this knowledge, and that the Catholic Church today is desperate to keep it secret.

The stakes are high. A recent survey in England found that people who had read the book were far more likely to believe that Jesus fathered a child with Mary and to think poorly of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization that Brown paints negatively.

"There's a huge number of people who said, 'I always thought this was true, but now I know,' " said Ken Boa, Atlanta-based author of "The Gospel According to The Da Vinci Code: The Truth Behind the Writings of Dan Brown."

But, he added, "the book bristles with historical blunders that are so egregious that if James Michener or Tom Clancy had the same blunders in one of their books, they'd be laughed at."

The complicated story — a sort of thriller for eggheads, with car chases, gun battles and cryptological puzzles — struck a nerve with the public.

Sheryl Gosa, a real estate agent and Presbyterian minister in Atlanta, is renting a theater Monday night at Phipps Plaza and inviting clients and friends to a private "Da Vinci" screening. She doesn't believe everything in the book, but thinks Brown's bigger points are worth considering.

"Somewhere along the line, either in a coordinated way or not, the people who put together the institutional church chose certain points and rejected certain points of theology and doctrine," she said.

Unlike many Christian critics, she's not bothered by the allegations in "Da Vinci." "My theology does not require Jesus to have been celibate, single or childless," she said.

"Da Vinci" was not controversial when it was first published; the backlash grew with the book's popularity. By the time Columbia Pictures got ready to market it as a summer blockbuster starring Hanks and directed by Ron Howard, the studio knew it had both high awareness and a great deal of concern among the potential audience.

In contrast to Brown, who told CNN in 2003 that "the background is all true" in the novel, the filmmakers have gone out of their way to emphasize it as just a summer popcorn movie.

"This is a work of fiction," Howard told the Los Angeles Times. "It's not history. It's not theology."

Hanks told Britain's Evening Standard: "The story we tell is loaded with hooey and fun kinds of scavenger-hunt nonsense."

Sony held almost no advance screenings and limited access to the movie. It was screened for some media (including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and publicly at Cannes only on Tuesday, three days before the worldwide opening.

Christians have taken a variety of approaches to countering the movie.

Many believe it is important to see the movie and engage it on its own terms. In a poll of pastors by Leadership Journal, a Christian magazine, 53 percent said they plan sermons, classes or some sort of response to the movie.

"You have no credibility if you say this is trash but you don't see the movie," said Boa, the author. "But you can leverage this to discuss who is the real Jesus: The Jesus of the Gospels or the Jesus of 'The Da Vinci Code'? "

In a posting on Christianity Today's Web site, however, Barbara Nicolosi, an influential Christian blogger, attacked Christians who said they saw the movie as an opportunity to discuss their faith, saying that would be akin to "debating the devil."

The Rev. Wilton Gregory, Catholic archbishop of Atlanta, said Thursday that he accepts that people will see the movie. "'The Da Vinci Code' would not be on my list of recommended movies," he said in a statement. "But the fact is that many have already read the book and will see the movie. What I hope is that those who do will spend at least as much time looking into the truth about Jesus Christ, his Church and her Scriptures."

BEGETTING 'THE DA VINCI CODE'

Speculation about Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene is as old as, well, the Bible.

But it was the book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that pushed the topic into the public arena. Written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln and published first in England in 1982, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" drew on ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories to promote the claim that Jesus married Mary and she bore him one or more children. The children, or their descendants, supposedly immigrated to France, where believers hoped they would reclaim the French monarchy while protecting them from threatened members of the Catholic Church.

So where did Dan Brown come up with "The DaVinci Code"? Baigent and Leigh believe he stole it from their book, and they sued him in English court. A judgment against Brown was overturned by a higher court in April.

Freelance writer Rachel Pomerance and The Associated Press contributed to this article.