Intellectual Defenestration

Inadequate

While the movie may not be all that great anyway, Drew Trotter argues (via A Pilgrim's Journey) that part of the reason the book The Da Vinci Code has been so successful is because of Christians:

[The] second reason The Da Vinci Code has been such a phenomenon ... [is] the pestilential lack of biblical literacy in this country today. If more people knew even the basic history of their faith, they would have dismissed The Da Vinci Code for what it is. Unfortunately, it has troubled them deeply because, built on what they take to be historically arguable facts, the story actually seems plausible to them. The Church has done a poor job of equipping its people for the work of debunking silly stories like this one, but all the blame cannot be laid at the feet of the Church. I know many churches where Sunday school classes in church history or the background of the Bible are readily available, and yet people stay away in droves. Our penchant for self-help classes, counseling seminars, and books on anything but the stuff of Scripture has left us thoroughly unable to respond when arguments contradictory to the faith and claiming to be based on history are put forward as truth.

To that one can add the general problem of historical myopia within evangelicalism. Regardless, before too many Christians become apocalyptically apoplectic about Dan "666" Brown, it might be wise to reconsider some knee-jerk anti-intellectual attitudes.

May 19, 2006 01:49 PM
Trackback URL for this entry: http://baltiblogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/8221