Useful Idiots?

I am not a fan of the DaVinci Code as anything like either theology or history, I am on record for that, and I in no way want to modify that position.

But I do wonder to what extent the church's being a Nervous Nelly about the DaVinci Code movie is simply a part of the marketing technique of Sony Pictures and Dan Brown? The more sweat we pour over this flick, the more people might suspect something is up, the more curious people get, the more people see it. And if church groups organise outings to view the movie, who is Sony to care? It's still money in their pockets. Are we just being useful idiots here?

This is just a suspicion. I do, of course, think it is worthwhile to discuss and explore the sorts of things that the DaVinci Code says, even though it is fiction. (After all, fiction isn't always a synonym for 'lies'.) And besides, Sony/ Dan Brown/ Doubleday aren't the only ones cleaning up: writing books on the history/myth/ lies behind the DaVinci Code has become a cottage industry. So who's zooming whom?

(And I suppose, behind the patina of 'spiritual quest' or 'questioning authority', there really simply lies the profit motive. If Da Vinci weren't making scads of cash, Sony and Doubleday wouldn't be promoting it, and all the other publishers wouldn't be piling on. I'm not sanguine about this, as it points out how our preoccupation with the market and money ultimately make questions of meaning and truth -- human questions -- trivial or meaningless.)

There is actually one such book I might take a look at, that I just discovered today. It is The Da Vinci Code and the Secrets of the Temple, by Robin Griffith-Jones. (With a name like that, you know he's British!) He is the current Master of the Temple in London, and a well-respected mainstream Anglican biblical scholar to boot. (To read more about him, his book, and what "Master of the Temple" really means, check out here.)

But I do wonder if our tutting and nervous glances have actually made a page-turning ultra-quick read with sloppy, half-baked history into much much more than it should be?

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(BTW, Andy Goodliff has a post which partly amplifies some of these thoughts of mine, and is worth checking out here. (That doesn't sound clear -- what I mean is, he posted his ideas before mine, although I came up with these thoughts independently of his post, although reading his post encouraged my thinking a bit more. His post does not rely on mine in any way. There, fully disclosed!))

Street Preaching: Two Cracking Good Christmas Sermons

I realize that many of those who read Gower Street may have already run across at least one of these two fine sermons, not least because I am so late in posting the links! Nevertheless, here are two Christmas sermons from two rather different bishops who are both scholars, great preachers, and Godly servants of Christ and the church. They make me proud to be an Anglican.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams preached this sermon at Canterbury Cathedral on Christmas Day, 2005. A preview:

It ought to shock us to be told year after year that the universe lives by the kind of love that we see in the helpless child and in the dying man on the cross. We have been shown the engine room of the universe; and it ought to worry us – us, who are so obsessed about being safe and being successful, who worry endlessly about being in control, who cannot believe that power could show itself in any other way than the ways we are used to. But this festival tells us exactly what Good Friday and Easter tell us: that God fulfils what he wants to do by emptying himself of his own life, giving away all that he is in love....

...Morality, said one prominent modern Greek Orthodox theologian, is not about right and wrong, it’s about reality and unreality, living in Christ or living for yourself. Being good is living in the truth, living a real life, a life that is in touch with ‘the fire in the equations’ and that lets the intense creativity of God through into his world. The goodness of the Christian is never a matter of achieving a standard, scoring high marks in a test. It is letting the wonder of God’s love knock sideways your ordinary habits, so that God comes through – the God who achieves his purpose by reckless gift, by the cradle and the cross.

Wow! And Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, in his Christmas sermon, chose the interesting theme of drawing together Christmas and the DaVinci Code. Among other standard Christmas-story unpacking and discussion of evidence, he says:

Conspiracy theories are always fun: fun to invent, fun to read, fun to fantasise about. Truth is sometimes a bit bleak and harsh by comparison. That's part of the point; real life sometimes is bleak and harsh. And God came to share it, to take the worst that it could do on to himself. That's the point of the Christmas story.

Take and read -- and enjoy these two Christmas crackers.