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Two decades ago, Christians took a stand against Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. When a draft of the script was made public, protestors compelled Paramount to abandon the project, and when Universal produced the movie a few years later, in 1988, Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright offered the studio some $10 million to buy the movie and destroy it. And then, when the film was released, Christians staged a number of boycotts and pickets outside theatres—a noisy tactic some believers now regret.

But today, churches are taking a different approach to controversial films, including The Da Vinci Code, Ron Howard's film adaptation of the Dan Brown bestseller, which releases May 19. Pastors, scholars and teachers are writing books, preparing sermon series and Sunday school lessons, and creating websites devoted to "engaging" this pop-cultural artifact as part of an ongoing "dialogue."

Michael Licona, director of apologetics and interfaith evangelism for the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board, created a 65-minute video lecture (available here) to foster discussion about some of the book's claims. He remembers telling people to avoid The Last Temptation, but he says he would definitely not take that approach now.

"I think we made a mistake back then," Licona says. "I think we communicated that we're not interested in having critical discussions—that if you mention Jesus in a negative way we're just going to pick up our ball and go home—and I think that has hurt us as Christians.

"If you look at Acts 17, Paul was very familiar with the secular poets, because he quoted them. When he spoke to the philosophers at Athens, he never quoted the Scriptures, he quoted their own poets. And if we're going to relate to non-believers as Christians, we need to be familiar with what's coming out, movies and books."

In addition to the many Da Vinci Code-related books filling Christian bookstores, several resources have sprung up online. Outreach, Inc. has posted sermon ideas and other resources, including some hosted by Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel, while Catholic apologists have set up websites like JesusDecoded and Da Vinci Outreach.

In addition, over 40 commentators representing Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches have written critical essays for The Da Vinci Dialogue, a website sponsored by Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind The Da Vinci Code, in conjunction with Grace Hill Media, a company that promotes movies to the religious media.

Darrell Bock, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and a contributor to the The Da Vinci Dialogue site, once advised people to avoid The Last Temptation, and he would do the same with The Da Vinci Code if the public had not already "embraced" the book and its ideas to such a large degree. But because the novel has "penetrated the cultural consciousness," he says a completely different response is called for today.

"I have a very strong feeling that we should read the book," he says. "If we're going to engage the culture and interact with a point of view, we need to read the point of view that we are interacting with. It undermines our credibility to say that we have never read the point of view or seen it."

However, some observers take a dimmer view of the opportunities for "dialogue" created by the upcoming movie and the book on which it is based. Barbara Nicolosi, executive director of the Act One screenwriting program in Los Angeles, says Christians have become so concerned about appearing "hip" and not being rejected by the secular world that they have allowed themselves to be co-opted by the corporate forces behind the movie.

"Is slander an opportunity for dialogue?" she asks. "Everything is an opportunity for dialogue, but the question is, are we framing the dialogue? And the answer is no, and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. The dialogue is completely being framed by Sony Pictures and Dan Brown."

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