Angels and Daemons and Bears

I’ve got to tell you; the only thing I love more than an old fashioned good conspiracy flic is a Church conspiracy movie that masquerades under a guise of sensationalized historical and theological jargon. Wait. Hold up. Let me turn my sarcasm off for a moment. /sarcasm off

I guess I don’t really like any of those things. But let me tell you—Dan Brown is surely the Sherlock Holmes of this generation. Brown’s superior sleuthing has brought to light some of the Churches deepest and darkest secrets. Wait! There’s other early Christian apocrypha that isn’t in the bible? Wait! You mean to tell me that these writings were intentionally not included in the canon? I cry shenanigans. Conspiracy! The Church and everyone in it are involved in the biggest lie ever told; the Church is surely a power lusting and money hungry hierarchical institution which I can never trust again! No wonder Luther left the Church! I’m never going to church again! I’m converting to some East Asian religious tradition to spite my parents Protestantism! /sarcasm off

Well, this weekend “Angels and Demons” hit the box office. I’ve never been particularly fond of sensationalized religious movies (or books), but I’ve been feeling especially caustic towards Brown’s latest piece of work. Would a lawyer enjoy watching Law and Order? Would a doctor like watching E.R? When you study a craft—almost every genre of television and movie programming that critiques or masquerades as your craft is going to be annoying and ignorant to you. Still—you can’t escape people’s curiosity with this nonsense (it’s literally art—fiction). Your congregants are going to be concerned about this conspiracy stuff. If you’re a preacher you should be prepared for it. If you’re a teacher you should probably roll your eyes and mock the scholarly integrity of Brown’s work for the heck of it—and gently remind people that it’s just a work of fiction. There’s a multitude of specials about “decoding” Brown’s book. Mah Zeh? It’s fiction! It doesn’t need to be decoded—and it doesn’t need a television special! Would you try to “crack” the code of Harry Potter? Stop trying to breathe truth into fiction. Stop trying to make sense of what’s not supposed to make sense; it’s fiction! Besides—this stuff isn’t new! I’m surprised that Brown has managed to dredge up and sensationalize things that have been “old news” since the 1950s. Why didn’t it get any love back then? Sigh.

Well, I just want to warn you that you can expect to witness a barrage of zealous Christian apologetic as a reply to this stuff. You can also expect a volley of anti-religious and anti-institution college-age kids to be getting a rise out of this passionate, but likely uninformed apologetic. It will probably serve as another arrow in their quiver to use against you in Youtube comments, letters to the editor in your local papers, or some other anonymous place to post philosophical musings. And why am I being such a jerk? I can’t stand that this movie promotes antagonism and wholesale dichotomy between science and religion; a dualistic hermeneutic. Sigh! If your religion can’t be in conversation with science—then (to you) science and (your) religion are going to be mortal enemies. Science isn’t the problem—you are. If you pit these two colossal hermeneutics against one another you limit their integrity and capacity. In the words of Charlie Brown, “Uhhhg!” We’ve got a lot to learn here.

-Dan