Scot McKnight: A Perspective on the Da Vinci Code

Why is it that so many, in spite of repeatedly hearing about the historical implausibilities and the impossible scenario Dan Brown created for history, want to believe the inherent story of this book?

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My contention is that we live in a culture that does not believe the Church for a variety of reasons: it uses a hermeneutic of suspicion; it learns that there are parts of the Church’s history that are not pretty; it hears facts about the priests and the pastors who have abused their calling and turned spirituality into crime; it knows of Christians who are hypocrites — and it simply says, “Well, maybe all along they’ve been a bunch of power-suppressing liars.”

There are some responses to each of these, but this is what I’m hearing, and I hope we use this movie to press the Church to learn to be more credible, trustworthy and full of integrity.

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