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Director Ron Howard to direct anti-Christian film?

From film industry websites to the pages of Variety, news has spread quickly that Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, EdTV, Backdraft) is reuniting with screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and producer Brian Grazer, with whom he made A Beautiful Mind. Together they plan to make a big screen version of the summer's most popular page-turner, The DaVinci Code.

Fans of the book are probably thrilled by the news. But moviegoers and readers alike should be aware that the bestseller, written by Dan Brown, is chock-full o'lies and distortions.

This casts the news of Howard's involvement in a strange light. In an article at Ted Baehr's Movieguide, we are informed that Howard "confides to his associates that he is a Christian." The site also enthusiastically noted that Howard, at the 2001 Oscars, went to the microphone and said "God bless you." He was, by implication, a sign that Oscar was "cleaning up its act."

How will Howard's Christian fans respond to learn that he is now directing a film based on a book that promotes all sorts of false claims about Christ?

The novel is about a curator at the Louvre whose murder leads investigators to a startling discovery. It turns out the dead man has been part of an ancient secret society called the Priory of Sion that has concealed a scandalous secret for ages. What's the secret? Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, and she was with child when he died. Jesus' descendents—the Merovingians—carried on a tradition of celebrating "the sacred feminine." Brown's story also insists that Christ's divinity was made up by the Emperor Constantine as a political maneuver.

Most of this, writes Christian columnist Amy Wellborn, "is derived directly from the fantasy-disguised-as historical work Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and what is not is cobbled from other bits of well-worn and risible nuggets of esoteric and Gnostic conspiracy theories."

Carl E. Olson (Envoy) says, "The book … boils down to this: humanity needs to abandon its silly belief that Jesus is Savior and God, and get back to worshipping the 'sacred feminine,' especially as personified by Jesus' (supposed) wife, Mary Magdalene. Also important to Brown: the [Roman] Catholic Church needs a woman's touch (Mary Magdalene again; not Mary the Mother of God) and must abandon her obsession with doctrine, orthodoxy, and truth. Finally, religion is stupid and for simpletons."

Blogger Barbara Nicolosi (Church of the Masses) writes, "The real puzzle is how come a book that is known to be virulently anti-Catholic can be acquired without a peep of indignation from the people who have been overflowing with horror about how some supposed scenes in The Passion may possibly be contorted by some twisted wackos somewhere into a validation of anti-Semitism? There is nothing subtle about the bigotry in The Da Vinci Code. It's just badly researched, offensive hate-blather which uses Christians as its object."

For more on the inaccuracies of Brown's book, check out this analysis by Margaret M. Mitchell of the University of Chicago's Divinity School.

Next week: Religious press critics explore the depths of Mystic River, strike back at Kill Bill—Vol. 1, respond to the Coen Brothers' Intolerable Cruelty, and much more.

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October (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47