ABSTRACT
On 19 May 2006, the blockbuster movie The Da Vinci Code opened in American movie theatres, holding the top box office spot and earned over US$77 million upon opening. The film-and the book of the same name on which it is basedpurports to provide answers about the life of Jesus Christ, in the process calling into question some of the main tenets of Christianity, in particular whether or not Jesus was divine and whether or not he fathered children with Mary Magdalene. Catholic reactions to the movie were strong, with Vatican officials calling for boycotts (Wooden 2006), Catholic groups pressuring the Chinese government to ban the movie (Kahn 2006), religious hunger strikes in India and a ban in the Philippines (Goodstein 2006). In the US, however, it is fair to say that evangelical reactions to the movie were mixed at best. While one Presbyterian evangelical church rented an entire theatre for its members to see the movie and then take part in church-sponsored discussions, two other evangelical churches-an Assembly of God and a Vineyard church-provided alternative literature and held sermons refuting the principles of the movie. Meanwhile, religious leaders from a fourth church rejected the content of the film, but made their church grounds into a kind of Da Vinci Code movie set, hiding ‘secret codes’ for church members to find inside the sanctuary and outer areas and remaking their website and church map to look like an ancient scroll, taken directly from the movie itself.
