By Chad Phillips
MTW contributing writer
In late May and through June of 2006 I wrote a series of articles critiquing the source material for Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code. What I remember most of all about the experience was my disdain for Brown, a man who, in my opinion, undermined a lot of people's faith with his novel and who probably gave many others another excuse NOT to believe in the Christ of faith/history. In particular I felt that Brown had deliberately misrepresented Christianity because he realized in doing so he could profit from it.
Well, it's amazing the perspective one can gain in a year. I now realize that I really should be thanking Dan Brown for his attack on the faith. That's right, thanking him. Let's face it, Brown's book will make you better or bitter. Those who took Brown's claims at face value weren't enlightened by it's contents because they never bothered to check Brown's claims against the facts, which is unfortunate. Some of those people were believers who after reading Brown's book lost their faith. But I must ask, if it hadn't been Brown, wouldn't someone or something else have done the job? And let's be realistic, for those whose minds are sufficiently closed to the gospel anyway, Brown's novel just gave them another excuse NOT to believe in the Christ of faith/history.
What about those of us who had the audacity to question Brown's research and do some fact checking? Well, our faith was actually strengthened. Brown's attack on Christianity forced us to go deeper in order to answer the questions and fabrications raised in his novel.
Also, many people, for the first time began to inquire about Christianity. Brown's novel piqued the curiosity of seekers who wanted to know more about this man named Jesus and I think that's pretty awesome.
It is, then, with a certain amount of ambivalence that this week's "thank you" goes to Dan Brown.
What really irked me about Brown’s book was his pitching that this was his unique idea, when he stole it. In 1995 Harry Harrison had published his novel “One King’s Way” one of three books in an alternate history trilogy about Vikings. The series sucked me in, because I liked Harrison’s writing and Viking stories are always good. Then he screwed me and many other readers by proposing in the final book that Christ was not the son of God and didn’t die on the cross.
Dan Brown (not to be confused with the far more imaginative Dale Brown of “Flight of the Old Dog” military fiction fame) did not come up with the idea.
In fact, Harrison didn’t either- turns out there really is a cult of nuts in Europe that claim they are descended from Christ.
Dan Brown chose something blasphemous to whore his book. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in “there’s no bad publicity” but Dan Brown’s subject matter, and choice of trying to claim it was an original idea marks him as a hack in MY book.