Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 48:3 (Sep 2005)
Article: God's Word or Male Words? Postmodern Conspiracy Culture and Feminist Myths Of Christian Origins
Author: David R. Liefeld

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JETS 48:3 (September 2005) p. 449

God's Word or Male Words?
Postmodern Conspiracy Culture
and Feminist Myths Of Christian Origins

David R. Liefeld

David R. Liefeld resides at 3 Outpost Court, St. Peters, MO 63376.

"We predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

A secret conspirator on The X-Files1

A highly educated female friend once told me that the early Church taught reincarnation until, during the Constantinian era of the Church, a bishop's wife insisted on banning it.2 What troubled me, as I pondered this comment, was not her New Age ideas—pastors are well prepared for this by our studies of contemporary culture. What really troubled me was the ease with which she asserted a conspiratorial view of early Church history. I had known many lesser-educated people who believed in global conspiracies, whether of the Jews or the Trilateral Commission, but this was a highly educated professional. Her comment illuminated the extent to which anti-authoritarian, often feminist, reinterpretations of Christian history have penetrated popular culture.3

The extent of that penetration was demonstrated in the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, a clever murder mystery in which Dan Brown portrays

JETS 48:3 (September 2005) p. 450

Christianity as a deliberate fraud fabricated by a misogynistic early Church. The "truth about Jesus," we were told, is that Mary Magdalene and Jesus participated together in rituals of sacred sexuality. After Jesus was crucified, Mary supposedly fled to France with their daughter (the Holy Grail— or sacred blood line), who founded the Merovingian dynasty. The Priory of Sion then was established to protect the heirs of that dynasty and also created the Knights Templar to excavate the treasures of the Jerusalem temple. The Priory, the Templars, and the Masons are said to have preserved and ritually transmitted elements of this, particularly the knowledge that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were the hieros gamos—the sexually sacred couple.

Now, at one level, this is just fiction. The Da Vinci Code has the standard disclaimer: "All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." So why all the fuss created by this book? The fuss is the seriousness with which Dan Brown himself intends this depiction of Christianity. His book begins with a prominently displayed "fact" page on which he states that the Priory of Sion is a real organization and th...

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