Two years ago at Easter, Hollywood handed Baptists what some called the greatest witnessing opportunity of our time — the film “The Passion of the Christ,” a dramatic walk with Jesus to Golgotha.
But this Easter season, the gift is packaged a little differently. A lot differently, actually.
In “The Da Vinci Code,” a film adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel of the same name, fictional characters uncover evidence that Christ is only an elected deity — not a deity in His own right. And the movie touts Mary Magdalene as His wife — not to mention the idea that the couple began a bloodline, descendents of which still live today.
When the points are enumerated like this, it’s easy for Christians to know that Brown’s portrayal of Jesus is wrong — no question. But questions begin to arise when the incorrect pieces are packaged with historical facts and long-revered artwork, such as in the book and movie.
This is First Priority of America founder Benny Proffitt’s concern. Proffitt, former youth minister at Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, said, “In conversations and discussions, even in Sunday School settings, the [book has] … already left even believers doubting foundational truths of their faith and questioning the validity of any historically accurate documents.”
Readers are led to the crux by car chases, escapes at gunpoint and other mystery sequences that suddenly smack into the book’s pivotal point. Here, Brown’s “truth” comes out — Jesus is not exactly what the Bible has Christians believing, or so the characters claim.
That motif is not exactly a Christian’s typical Easter-season fare, said Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, in Montgomery Baptist Association.
But movie gurus aren’t banking on Baptists to book up theaters this year to have a box-office smash. They are hanging their hopes on star Tom Hanks and the truth of a line that characters quote occasionally in the novel — “Everyone loves a conspiracy.”
It appears Hollywood holds the cards, but the “conspiracy” could turn in the favor of Christians if they would prepare to confront it, Wolf said, adding that he will be preaching a sermon on the movie just before it is released May 19.
Even though Alabama Baptist churches aren’t renting out theaters in a widespread way as they did for “The Passion of the Christ,” many church members are still planning to go.
Why? “This is a super opportunity for us to turn ‘The Da Vinci Code’ into a net for the church. What we have is an interesting cultural opportunity to magnify the truth,” Wolf said.
Baptist churches across the state, much like First, Montgomery, are planning ways to prepare their members to engage those around them in conversations about the fallacies in “The Da Vinci Code.”
Even in Paris — the setting for most of “The Da Vinci Code” — plans are in place for a three-day event at St. Michael’s Anglican Church that will coincide with the opening of the film.
The weekend conference, called Cracking the Da Vinci Code, is being held in hopes of attracting churchgoers and nonchurchgoers, said Scott Sontag, music minister of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Paris.
“It is great that this book actually has stirred up so many dusty Christians. It is causing debate in magazines, TV talk shows and churches,” said Sontag, who is originally from Louisiana.
The staff at Emmanuel Baptist passed a copy of the book around when it first hit the shelves, and Sontag said he was captured by the story and had the feeling he just couldn’t put it down.
But he started noticing discrepancies right away in the opening chapters — beginning when a police car drives the main character to the Louvre via a street running through the Jardin de Tuileries. The street doesn’t exist.
“Then later in the book, I began to question so many of the things his characters were stating as well-known facts,” Sontag said. “So I began to take notes on the side, questioning myself. Once the book got around to the secret marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, I knew he was completely off base.”
Many like Sontag who know better say they see right away that the book and movie — packaged as fiction — are not to be taken seriously.
But the point that threw many others off was when Brown — recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine — claimed the book was “history as I have come to understand it.”
“I wrote this novel as part of my own spiritual quest and I never imagined a novel could become so controversial,” he said in an audio interview available on his Web site, www.danbrown.com. In the interview, Brown explained that he had been raised a Christian and to this day, tries “to live my life following the basic tenets of Christ.”
Brown added, however, that being a Christian means different things to different people. And in “The Da Vinci Code” — a self-proclaimed personal spiritual journey — he plays on many conspiracy theories regarding the accepted biblical story of Christianity.
And Brown only just stopped short of the cross. He said he had weighed the idea of including in the novel material that Christ had not truly died a physical death on the cross. And though he decided that would have been “just three or four steps too far,” he did say he believed the information came from “very credible sources.”
“The history that eventually becomes our truth depends entirely on what books we read and what teachers we have,” Brown said. “I think readers are very smart people capable of deciding for themselves how much of this novel makes sense to them and how much they want to believe.”
That was such a scary thought to Steve Scoggins, pastor of First Baptist Church, Opelika, in Tuskegee Lee Baptist Association, that his church planned multiple ways to combat the message of the book and upcoming movie.
“It’s a frontal attack on everything we hold dear … I don’t think we can afford not to be prepared,” he said. “As damaging as the book has been, the movie will be worse because men won’t always read but they will go watch Tom Hanks.”
First, Opelika, purchased 2,000 copies of Josh McDowell’s “The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers,” a 112-page response to the fallacies of “The Da Vinci Code.” The church has also planned for four Sunday nights of witness training related to the movie, as well as four Sunday-morning sermons on the trustworthiness of the Bible, the case for Christ’s divinity and the real story of Mary Magdalene.
“Some have told me it’s shaken their faith to the bone,” Scoggins said. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve got to mobilize for the movie.”
Brian Kirby, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist, will also be preaching a sermon series to his French congregation in the weeks leading up to the film. His sermons will use famous works of art as their focus, including a Good Friday service based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper.”
That famous work is used in “The Da Vinci Code” to portray its central theme. The book claims that the person seated to the right of Christ in the painting is actually Mary Magdalene and that the “V” shape made by the pair’s arms and shoulders symbolizes the Holy Grail, or the bloodline of Christ.
“He (Kirby) will use the Da Vinci ‘The Last Supper’ to bring up Brown’s book, with more about the fact that Jesus is the central figure of the painting, not Mary Magdalene as Brown’s characters claim,” Sontag said.
Brown’s characters claim many things in the work — and the author said that sometimes those characters speak for his thoughts or beliefs. One of the characters, Leigh Teabing, explains in a critical moment in “The Da Vinci Code” the conspiracy surrounding the Christian story in this way:
“[T]he clergy in Rome are blessed with potent faith, and because of this, their beliefs can weather any storm, including documents that contradict everything they hold dear. But what about the rest of the world? What about those who are not blessed with absolute certainty? What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? … What happens to those people, Robert, if persuasive scientific evidences comes out that the Church’s version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold.”
In the book, main character Robert Langdon did not respond.
But Alabama Baptists definitely have.
“He’s not a conspiracy. He’s Christ and He makes a real difference in my life today,” Wolf said. “Any thinking Christian knows that Jesus who reigns over your soul is real. We can use this as a chance to share the fact of Christ.”
Alabama Baptist churches prepare to defend Jesus
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