THE DA VINCI CODE Author Roundtable

2. FaithfulReader.com: Why do you think so many people have embraced THE DA VINCI CODE? Do you believe the spiritual climate in America today has contributed to its success, and if so, why?

Amy Welborn: The first reason for the success of this novel is that Doubleday engaged in a very intense pre-publication campaign with booksellers. Once they came on board, the early reviews started coming in, which pretty much all praised the book as a "brainy thriller," as something exciting, yet intellectual as well. That caught people's fancy --- the book has a veneer of scholarship about it that encourages people to feel as if they're not just reading pop fiction --- that they're getting smarter in the process.

I think the primary spiritual factor is the widespread and deep American suspicion of religious institutions. It's not just the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandals --- it's a general feeling that institutions don't communicate truth, and in fact, often conspire to hide it, a feeling into which this novel feeds very directly.

Steve Kellmeyer: As I explain on my blog (www.skellmeyer.blogspot.com), THE DA VINCI CODE is embraced because it hits two hot buttons. The first is actually rather incidental --- it attacks the Catholic Church, or rather, a series of popular misconceptions about what Catholicism teaches. This attack works because America is a famously Protestant country. As such, Catholics have always been the enemy. American politics, for instance, has a virtually unbroken history of maintaining an anti-Catholic populist political party in some form, from the Freemasons, Know-Nothings and Ku Klux Klan of the 1800s to the Democratic Party we've had since the 1970s. Even Kennedy was elected only after substantially repudiating his faith --- he had to insist that he wouldn't live his faith if elected in order to BE elected.

But the anti-Catholicism really isn't the novel's driving force. The major impetus for its popularity is its vision of sex as holy, sacred, mystical. In a culture that treats sex like fast food, Dan Brown actually provides a needed spiritual anodyne. It has been said that 80% of book sales are to women. Brown has acknowledged every woman's vision of what life should be like in a way that resonates with her own understanding of herself. Women understand that they are meant to be served by man. Instead, men use them like Kleenex. In that regard, Brown's book explicitly says what women implicitly feel.

Now it should be pointed out that goddess worship is actually misogynistic --- after all, it's modern counterpart, Wicca, was invented by an adulterer, and one of its main symbols is the chalice (representing the womb) and the blade (representing the penis). How many women enjoy imagining their spouse's sex organ as a sharp blade slicing in between their legs? But that's a major element of goddess worship ritual symbology --- the blade slicing into the cup.

However, since Dan doesn't dwell on that symbolism and since he completely misrepresents the history of Wicca (along with the history of everything else), he can fabricate an aura of holy woman worship that is quite appealing. And it SHOULD be quite appealing. It is, after all, very much analogous to the Christian understanding of woman's importance. You wouldn't know it to read anti-religious "Scripture scholars," but the early Christian fathers of the Church from St. Paul on were very appreciative of the reverence that is every woman's due.

It is a reverence completely absent from American culture. Brown's vision is thus completely at odds with the way modern culture, e.g., rappers or TV sitcoms, view women. In American culture, women are only fully women when they are sterile sex machines, constantly available and interested primarily in the next orgasm. That's why Brown's book is appealing. He reminds women of who they are.

Darrell L. Bock: There is much interest in spiritual issues and religion today. Our world has become a sterile place for many. The novel is attractive to many because its themes resonate in our culture. Some of the interest is that the topics are "romantic" with the mystery of the Grail and the interesting locales that are used. The emphasis on secrets and codes is fun. On the other hand, some appeals to a higher role for women, skepticism toward the institutional church, especially Roman Catholicism, and the effort to make Jesus less than he is in historic Christianity also fit a more substantive ideological worldview many would like affirmed, regardless of what the real history is. So the popularity results from a combination of spiritual interest in America, a well-told story, and some very suspect history, which most readers do not have a background to assess. This is why I compared the novel to an exercise in virtual reality. It looks plausible but really is not. Historically, the novel exploits what most people know very little about, but in a way that looks fascinating.

James L. Garlow: First of all, I think people are often times drawn to conspiracy theories, even when they have no credibility. Secondly, there's a substantial group of people in America who have either been disappointed by the Catholic Church or let down by it, and they are looking for an excuse to justify leaving the Roman Catholic Church or an excuse to bash it. I do believe the spiritual climate has probably contributed to the success of THE DA VINCI CODE, but it is important to remember that whereas Dan Brown's book has sold seven million copies, Rick Warren's PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE has sold over fifteen million copies. In addition, the Left Behind series, with its spin-off, has sold over sixty-two million. The Passion of Christ is approaching the four hundred million dollar mark. All three of these stand in sharp contrast to THE DA VINCI CODE, which is a blatant intentional attack upon the Bible and historic Christianity. Whereas Dan Brown's book is in forty languages, portions of the Bible are in four thousand languages. The Bible will still be the most read book long after Dan Brown's book is forgotten.

Peter Jones: Dan Brown taps into the public's present fascination with religious esoterica and the occult, into conspiracy theories, into basic anti-Roman Catholic clericalism, into the postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion, and into the interest of those who want to know the "true" origins of Christianity.

Carl E. Olson: The novel has been so successful because of a combination of factors. Readers have found the novel to be entertaining, of course, but they have often proven to be gullible, historically illiterate, eager to embrace Brown's anti-Catholic bias, and enamored with THE DA VINCI CODE's feminist, neo-gnostic messages. Certainly the climate was ripe for such a book. People are eager to be "spiritual" while shunning "organized religion." They are also open to the syncretistic, relativistic themes of the novel. In short, the novel promises easy answers to difficult questions, and that is undeniably attractive.

Sandra Miesel: Americans today are not only poorly grounded in history, they're infected with historical relativism. ("Winners write the histories so how can we know what happened in the past?) Catholics have been badly catechized for two generations and just don't know why we believe as we do. Many people now seem more comfortable with vague ideas of "spirituality" rather than concrete faith. New Age and Pagan concepts have been absorbed into mainstream thinking, even by supposed Christians. Some hearts flutter at mention of "the divine feminine." A sexually active Jesus is a titillating idea. It's interesting that Lewis Perdue, who's trying to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism, wrote novels no less blasphemous but without the Magdalene-Grail angle and his books didn't sell well.

Richard Abanes: It is no accident that THE DA VINCI CODE has become popular. Several factors have contributed to its success.

First, the book is highly anti-Roman Catholic, which makes it rather appealing in light of the recent revelations concerning widespread sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests. Many people who are horrified by such information need a release valve of sorts for their anger and disgust --- Brown's novel serves as such a valve by publicly labeling Roman Catholicism for what many people believe it to be: i.e., a corrupt, untrustworthy, deceptive religious organization built on a disreputable and harmful hierarchy of leaders. Brown's book appeals to the common desire voiced by many people who, in the face of what is offensive, feel a little better when someone, as the old cliché says, is "calling it like it is."

Second, the book is very well written from a technical standpoint. Its characters are memorable. The pace is very fast. Chapters are short, which means it is easy to mentally digest. And it contains the textbook elements of a good secular story: intrigue, romance, sexuality and some violence.

Third, it greatly appeals to women, a very large audience that represents a group of individuals, who for many years have felt rather oppressed by traditional religion, which Dan Brown relentlessly criticizes. Moreover, Brown puts a fairly radical feminist spin on a variety of historical issues. This aspect of the novel subtly appeals not only to the average female reader of fiction, but also helps attract female readers who might not otherwise buy a book that falls within the thriller genre.

Dan Burstein: We are seeing separate but inter-related phenomena in our culture that combine to create fertile ground for novels like THE DA VINCI CODE to catch on:

• A rebirth of interest in the major organized religions
  
• A new period of interest in a more generalized approach to spirituality that is not always associated with organized religion (and sometimes moves in the direction of embracing new religions or new personal mixes of religions)
  
• Increasingly widespread interest in non-religious scientific and cosmological inquiries about many of the big questions that religion has historically addressed
  
• Movements toward religious fundamentalism in all the major religions
  
• Growing concern about religious fundamentalism and extremism
  
  

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