Posted on 05/21/2009 6:47:26 AM PDT by rhema
The movie treatment of his novel, 'Angels and Demons,' is cleaning up at the box office this week. The sequel to 'The Da Vinci Code,' due out in November, might buoy the publishing industry through the recession. And if you want to understand the state of American religion, you need to understand why so many people love Dan Brown.
It isn't just that he knows how to keep the pages turning. That's what it takes to sell a million novels. But if you want to sell 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.
Brown is explicit about this mission. He isn't a serious novelist, but he's a deadly serious writer: His thrilling plots, he's said, are there to make the books' didacticism go down easy, so that readers don't realize till the end "how much they are learning along the way." He's working in the same genre as Harlan Coben and James Patterson, but his real competitors are ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. He's writing thrillers, but he's selling a theology.
Brown's message has been called anti-Catholic, but that's only part of the story. True, his depiction of the Roman Church's past constitutes a "greatest hits" of anti-Catholicism, with slurs invented by 19th-century Protestants jostling for space alongside libels fabricated by 20th-century Wiccans. (If he targeted Judaism or Islam this way, one suspects that no publisher would touch him.)
But Brown doesn't have the soul of a true-believing Enemy of the Faith. Deep down, he has a fondness for the ordinary, well-meaning sort of Catholic, his libels against their ancestors notwithstanding. He's even sympathetic to the religious yearnings of his Catholic villains — including, yes, the murderous albino monks.
This explains why both "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" end with a big anti-Catholic reveal (Jesus had kids with Mary Magdalene! That terrorist plot against the Vatican was actually launched by an archconservative priest!) followed by a big cover-up. A small elect (Tom Hanks and company, in the movies) gets to know what really happened, but the mass of believers remain in the dark, lest their spiritual questing be derailed by disillusionment and scandal. Having dismissed Catholicism's truth claims and demonized its most sincere defenders, Brown pats believers on the head and bids them go on fingering their rosary beads.
In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It's a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized "religiousness" detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.
The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don't suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion's dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who's too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they're making or how many times they've been married.
These are Dan Brown's kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who's a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.
But the success of this message — which also shows up in the work of Brown's many thriller-writing imitators — can't be separated from its dishonesty. The "secret" history of Christendom that unspools in "The Da Vinci Code" is false from start to finish.
The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling — they're far, far weirder than that — nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he's the only historically plausible Jesus there is.
For millions of readers, Brown's novels have helped smooth over the tension between ancient Christianity and modern American faith. But the tension endures. You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can't have both.
Ross Douthat writes a column for the New York Times. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" and, with co-author Reihan Salam, "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream." Previously, he was a senior editor at Atlantic Magazine, and he is the film critic for National Review magazine.
These are Dan Brown's kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who's a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.
“’Angels and Demons,’ is cleaning up at the box office this week. The sequel to ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ due out in November”
It came out in May - is this a bad cut and paste by the writer?
It’s also “Jesus or Liberalism” -
“Liberal Christian” is an oxymoron, because everything about liberalism is the antithesis of the Word of God.
I’ve spoken with people, mostly liberals btw, who thought “The DaVinci Code” was real.
My God, it says right on the cover that it’s a NOVEL.
I read other book and found it very entertaining, but it is dazzling inaccurate(done, obviously, to enhance the plot).
But it is easy to understand how such a book and a movie can generate so much interest in America - as we turn more and more secular, and make up religion as we go along.
What a shame that many of us believe that we can figure out God. It is one of the great canards of our day.
>> You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.
Fine! I’ll take Jesus.
From Hebrews 10:
“28He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
30For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
31It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. “
Good luck with that, Mr. Brown. I hope for the best for you, and I certainly have my own problems with obeying God. But I’d rather not be in your shoes come judgment day.
Years ago I read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, on which Brown’s books are based. It was a compelling read that left me with real concerns about my faith. I realized what the book was doing to me one day and I burned it.
No, it is all up to The Øbamanation's nominee... 
for Pope as soon as his religious stimulus package is passed!
“tendentions” = tendentious
Both the book and the movie were entertaining, but not necessarily heretical. Brown can spin a good yarn, but people need to be able to discern truth from fiction.
I saw the first movie hoping to see something that would challenge me to think. I was sadly disappointed. Not only was the plot thin but the movie never reached any good level of thrills or cinematic prowess. It was largely a waste of my time and energy. I can’t imagine the new movie or book will be any better.
Most people don’t believe Dan Brown’s crap because they are stupid and uninformed - they believe it because they want it to be true!
Mel
Well, no going to the theatre for this one..., I’ll just download and watch. I don’t want to pay anyone for garbage.
My God, it says right on the cover that it’s a NOVEL.
Even though those libs were idiots, Brown fueled that fire by insisting the certain things were "facts" at the start of the novel (but those facts were really hoaxes and BS).
I remember reading a Robert Ludlum novel in the 70s called The Gemini Contenders. Like, The Da Vinci Code, it involved a secret, that, if revealed, "would shake the foundations of Christianity". The book was a bestseller, like all Ludlum's novels. But it was not a monster hit like Brown's. Ludlum never went on TV claiming that his background info was "real". He just used some "secret documents" as a plot device.
I don't mind people idiots believing in brown's BS as long as they are not members of any serious Bible believing church.
So........
what’s the difference between “Angels and Demons” and “The Shack”?
None?
Angels and Demons is a prequel. A sequel to the DaVinci Code book is being released in November, just in time to give to all your anti-Christian friends for Festivus.
I enjoyed them both. But then again, I know they are fiction.
“The Shack” reminded me of “The Lovely Bones” another fictional novel that I enjoyed. They resonated with me because I am a parent, not because of any religious connection. The thought that a lost loved one (particularly a child) could still be “near” is comforting.
Those two plus the Brown books are all for entertainment. Not great works of art or religious treatises, but pulp fiction, quick beach reads, alternatives to tv. Brown pulls in lots of imagery from Rome and the Vatican which is interesting to this Catholic gal.
Man, do people get worked up about this stuff!
Its not really cleaning up at the box office. It came in at $43 million the 1st week which was $30 million less than the Da Vinci code. By contrast star Trek did $75 million in its 1st week.
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