The Da Vinci Code
Teaching moment: Temple Church and The Da Vinci Code
As master of the Temple Church in London, one of the sites featured in The Da Vinci Code, Robin Griffith-Jones has had the chance to talk to hundreds of people about the claims of the best-selling novel. His own book, The Da Vinci Code and the Secrets of the Temple (Eerdmans), is based on a regular talk he gives to visitors at the Temple Church. Griffith-Jones was educated at Cambridge University and ordained a priest in the Church of England. Before coming to London, he was a minister at a housing project in Liverpool; he also worked with Mother Teresa’s sisterhood in India. The Century talked to him about the popularity of The Da Vinci Code and how it has affected his life at the Temple Church.
Dan Brown's truthiness
In a culture supersaturated with information, overwrought and overstimulated by media, none of us is immune to the allure of truthiness. With our attention stretched thin and largely confined to the surface, we are forced back on our intuition, to some reflexive sense of what “feels true.”
Enter The Da Vinci Code. With the benefit of hindsight we can say the novel got noticed because of able marketing, and because it played into the manic milieu of truthiness.