From the only person who hasn't read the book

I was reading on Reuter's about the upcoming Da Vinci Code film, and their reference to a New Yorker article caught my eye:

Journalist Peter Boyer, who analyzed in this week's New Yorker how Hollywood carefully handled the marketing of the movie, said that at the heart of the book is a thesis that: "Christianity as we know it is history's greatest scam, perpetrated by a malignant, misogynist, and, when necessary, murderous Catholic Church (Reuters).

Since I haven't read the book, I thought that Boyer might help bring me up to speed. He did:

The premise of Brown’s story is that Jesus of Nazareth was, in the words of a “Da Vinci” character, “a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.”

“Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false,” one of the book’s main characters declares.

Boyer, who makes no apparent claims of faith in the article, has this take on the book's presentation:

Brown had asserted this veracity [of the book's historical claims] both implicitly (through the device of assigning historical exposition to his fictional scholars) and explicitly (beginning the book with a “fact” page that erroneously asserted, for example, that his shadowy Priory of Sion—“a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization”).

[Dan Brown] told Charles Gibson, on “Good Morning America,” that if the book had been nonfiction his factual assertions would not have changed.

One of the most interesting aspects of the article (which was its central thread) is how Sony has engaged Christian Da Vinci Debunkers to its website in order to keep them from protesting, picketing and boycotting (which would obviously hurt their income). One of the Christian contributors explains it this way:

[Darrell] Bock says. “Rather than simply whining and complaining, although there are still elements that do that, there is a substantial group that says, No, on this one we’re going to engage. So we’re not going to talk boycott. We’re not going to protest, we’re simply going to take the facts that were presented in this novel and we’re going to engage them, and we’re going to try to show people that there’s a good, substantive reply to what’s going on here.”

The net effect is Sony will make a lot of money (I predict), and many, many people will see a film that brazenly presents fiction as fact. Our great opportunity is not to stick our heads in the sand, but to take this occasion to boldly engage our friends, neighbors and colleagues who see the film, not only concerning the historical realities, but the present spiritual reality of our Lord and Christ.