Defusing the Message of a Hollywood Blockbuster

The popular book argues that Jesus sired a line of royalty before he died on the cross and that it was covered up by religious leaders. (Julia Ewan - Twp)

"I don't comment on projects I'm working on," says Bock, who has promoted "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Lord of the Rings," "Holes" and "Walk the Line."

Some evangelicals say they have rejected tentative approaches from Bock's firm.

"Grace Hill would know we're not going to get behind this film," says Bob Waliszewski, of radio ministry Focus on the Family, "unless it takes moviegoers in a different theological direction than the book. Which I'd doubt is going to happen."

But others have been more amenable to an accommodation with "The Da Vinci Code."

"The Campus Crusade book simply shows that, even among more conservative evangelicals, the church's response to controversial movies is changing," says Robert K. Johnston of Fuller Seminary. "Belligerence seldom works. It is more for the speaker than for the listener."

This is in sharp contrast to Campus Crusade's reaction to Martin Scorsese's controversial film "The Last Temptation of Christ." In 1988, the organization was part of a group that attempted to buy all prints of the movie and destroy them.

The marriage of convenience -- if that is what it is -- between evangelicals and the film's producers "doesn't seem so startling to me," says Teresa Berger, professor of ecumenical theology at Duke University Divinity School. "That's how consumer capitalism functions in relationship to religious traditions."

For his part, McDowell can't wait for May 19.

"I look at the book and the movie as a platform for evangelism," he says. "A little controversy can be a marvelous tool."

Some of the most intense reaction to "The Da Vinci Code" has come from Roman Catholics, who see themselves as the main villains of the novel.

In his book, Dan Brown portrays the Vatican -- through a real secret order, Opus Dei -- as going to any lengths to conceal the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Even murder.

Last March, Cardinal Tarciscio Bertone, a former Vatican official now serving as archbishop of Genoa, condemned the book.