The Chris Hill Festival -- The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things...

In a recent foray to the makeshift library, temporarily renting space from UMKC until the gigantic building across the street from me is done, I stumbled upon a book called Cracking DaVinci's Code. Most of you are I'm sure familiar with Dan "Same Plot Device in Every Book" Brown's uberbestseller The DaVinci Code. I read it last year, and found it a rollicking adventure just like the 60 bazillion people who bought it did. I picked up this particular book thinking it would delve a little deeper into the historical basis behind the novel. You could say I "judged a book by it's cover", if you will. Little did I expect that instead of a balanced factual look at the material, I would be enjoying a paranoid right-wing invective that stopped at nothing to offend anyone and everyone in its path.

According to one internet review, the authors of this book are the two top Christian Historians. That's really scary, as this book was written by two certified nutjobs who manage to take an entertaining work of fiction and turn it into an anti-religious manifesto that aims to convert our society to satanists. They take half-backed-up arguments and beat you over the head with them until you agree with them.

Along the way they manage to offend nearly every non-Christian group. They refer to the "Pagan Chinese", attempting to marginalize one of the world's largest religions. They equate homosexuality with pedophilia, pornography, and bestiality. They portray all feminists as dirty, pagan lesbians (a stereotype I thought that went out back in the 60's). And funniest of all, they refer to college professors as an army of left-wing antireligious brainwashers.

At the beginning of every chapter is a short vignette following the story of a fictitious character who reads The DaVinci Code and is tempted by her lesbian feminist roommate to participate in orgiastic pagan ceremonies in her dorm room (wasn't this what college was like for you guys?). If this was the authors' attempt at fiction, well, Dan Brown they ain't. Along the way, she learns the valuable lesson that everyone is out to brainwash her with liberal propaganda except the kind, nonthreatening Christian boy who doesn't try to force his beliefs on her (unlike this book, for instance).

After the vignettes comes the defensive ramblings, where the authors attempt to pick apart the plot of a novel. All of their statements are of course backed with strong statements, threats, and nonevidence such as "all recognized scholars and historians support this fact." And they occasionally pull out gems like "there might be hundreds of factions (religions) with their unique little agendas, but ultimately they all will eventually align themselves under two fundamental alliances: pagan monism and biblical theism." Wow. Watch out Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews. You will soon join together and renounce your previous beliefs to fight the pagan menace.

But the thing that really blows my mind is that this book isn't the only one. A quick search of Google reveals many books by Christian authors attempting to discredit The DaVinci Code. A lot of people apparently see this novel as a legitimate threat to their 2000-year-old religion, but then again so is the gay marriage bill, legalized abortion, video game violence, premarital sex, evolutionary theory, science, higher education, feminism, archaeology, etc. etc. In fact, there are so many people and things trying to convert you to paganism out there that if you're a Christian you should probably sit at home and read the bible all day, lest your apparently-paper-thin belief system be toppled by a professor or wandering scientist.

And because these crazies are the loudest Christians, they give the whole religion a bad name. Not all Christians are intolerant fundamentalists who think the Earth is flat, just like not all liberals are Michael Moore. Why don't any of the balanced, rational Christians write books? Probably the same reason that none of the nonpartisan, non-bigoted Republicans of average girth have syndicated radio shows.

I just fniished Brown's book (and so did my wife) and I thought it was well written. There was much in there I did not know and now I'm very eager to see these paintings by Da Vinci and have my own epiphany.

I just found Brown's first book in paperback in a Cape May bookstore so I'm about to read that.

I liked Brown's elevation of the "sacred feminine" and I think much could be gained if the repressiveness of modern conservative religions was put into the kind of perspective offered by Brown.

Now I'm searching the web to find out more stuff on this, and it's hard to tell what's fact and what is not.

You're right about that one Chris, I have that one as well as one on the conservative end of things. Interestingly though, it has made some people go to their respective pastors and get a good dialogue going about both the so called "true" and "false" things written in The Da Vinci Code (assuming that they have pastors that have both read the book and take everything with only a little bit of salt not a salt lick). My particular student pastor which I had about the same time that I was reading to book even did an Adult class on the background info including the Gnostic and Nag Hammadi texts which some of Brown's background info also may have come from.


	The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things...
	Home \| Archives \| Music \| Software \| About \| Contact