From Mark Gauvreau Judge at Breakpoint

Amy Welborn’s De-Coding Da-Vinci is a strong effort. Where Kellmeyer is sometimes glib, Welborn is sober, reasonable (although like Kellmeyer, she does claim that Da Vinci is “more than a novel.”) She wastes no time getting to the core of what fuels the Da Vinci phenomenon – Gnosticism. The ancient heretical movement, an offshoot of Christianity, had a few consistent themes: the source of goodness is the spiritual; the material and corporeal world is evil; humanity is messed up because we don’t realize that the “spark” of the divine is not outside but within us; salvation is attained by acquiring secret knowledge (gnosis means knowledge); only a select few are worthy of having this knowledge.

This is the nub of the entire thing, and the reason for its popularity. Dan Brown has not uncovered some baroque conspiracy that will inaugurate a brand new theology; he has reintroduced a very old heresy. To his credit, he has introduced it at the very time and place where it would be most celebrated: the narcissistic, unbelieving twenty-first century West. Gnosticism, after all, is the official religion of Hollywood.