On Accusations That He's Anti-Christian

After the publication of The Da Vinci Code, Brown admitted that he was shocked at the degree and venom of the criticism leveled toward him. “I have been accused of all sorts of things this year, among other things, of being anti-Christian,” he said. “I was raised Christian, and to this day, I try to live my life following the basic tenets of the teachings of Christ. This book is in no way anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. I am a Christian, although perhaps not in the most traditional sense of the word. I consider myself a student of many religions. My book just looks at the Catechism and the history of Christianity through a slightly different lens, that being the exploration of those books of the Bible that did not make it into Constantine’s version, the one we read today.”

In interviews, he was also careful to regularly assert that the novel he’s written and the facts he exposes shouldn’t turn people into nonbelievers. For instance, in the book, he asserted that Constantine and his sons edited the Bible in a way that underscored the divinity of Christ and would bring pagans and Christians together, therefore creating one brand of Christianity, not the several that existed at that time.

“Constantine was a savvy politician and made some decisions to make Christ more divine perhaps on paper than he really was,” he said. “This action in no way undermines the beauty of Christ’s message or the beauty of the message of the Bible. It’s simply a different way of looking at how that story came about.

Copyright © 2005 by Lisa Rogak