Da Vinci Code Undermines Faith, Survey Claims

Spoiler Alert!

Can’t say I was particularly suprised by the findings reported in this MSNBC story a week or so ago. The poll indicates that British readers of the novel are twice as likely (59% to 30%) to believe its claim that Jesus may have sired a child with Mary Magdalene, despite how easy it is to find relatively authoritative information which debunks this idea. These are distressing results. Nevermind the non-readers; what astounds me is the 29% of adults who are so easily swayed that a fictional novel, one based on a flimsy conspiracy theory, provides information sufficient for belief in some pretty baseless claims. For those 29%, the book was probably what convinced them. Do these people have any standards?

Surely, much of the blaim rests with author Dan Brown. If the book is anything like the movie, which I enjoyed this past weekend, much of the information comes from the mouths of the expert characters, the scholars and the professors, and is an inpenetrable mix of facts, historical innacuracies, speculation, and outright fantasy, and at no point is it particularly easy to tell the difference. It’s clear (to me) from his public statements that Dan Brown thinks there is some veracity to the content of the book, and I think it is to persuade in some ways. That said, it’s pathetic that so many seem uninterested in being skeptical of such claims, especially considering that, once again, they come in the form of a fictional novel.

What is even more disturbing to me, though, is that the issues and events the book discusses are genuinely interesting, yet at least 59% of its readers don’t feel compelled to investigate any further. Alternative accounts of Jesus’s life; the Catholic Church’s marginization of Mary Magdalene throughout history; the suppression or exclusion of certain texts, particularly the Gnostic Gospels; these topics are not only interesting and sometimes shocking, but they have a historical and factual basis which the conspiracy-oriented claims in The Da Vinci Code do not. Furthermore, it’s relatively easy to find more information on these topics. Behold Wikipedia!

For instance, after I saw the movie this past weekend I was instantly driven to find out more about the Council of Nicea, an event discussed during one particular scene. I was disappointed to find that it was characterized somewhat misleadingly, but it was great to follow up on a part of the movie that was able to grab my interest. Even better, Newsweek has a great article about the role of Mary Magdalene in the Church, which is one of the central themes of the book. There is some evidence that Mary Magdalene was not only not a prostitute but in fact may have been one of the Apostles, perhaps the first among them, and that her role and character were smeared over time by an increasingly male-dominated and ignorant church. To my mind, the (specious) claim the book makes that Mary was Jesus’s wife absolutely pales in comparison to this one, especially as a feminist issue.

Interestingly, the study was comissioned by Opus Dei, one of the organizations portrayed loosely in the book. It’s safe to say that they aren’t happy with the findings, and I can’t blame them: 17% of those who have read the book believe that the organization has committed murder, compared to 4% of those who have not.