Dan Brown, Sex and Religion, Part 3 (of 4)

This post continues a four day series showing how Dan Brown's assertions about the relationship between sex and religion and specifically Christianity. Each day's post is a small chunk of a complete article at my website at www.NewMediaMinistries.org Endnote references will appear at the end of the series.

Assertion 3: Religions demonize sex.

"For the early Church, mankind's use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the same. .... Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex? Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural-a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment-and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil."

Brief Answer

Brown has too simplistic a view about sex, religion and the history of the two. According to his view, all people in the ancient world thought that sex was a way to connect with God, but then the early Church leaders (as well as the Church to the present day) took away all the fun and demonized it in order to have more control over the people. This is not a fair assessment. There is no indication that early orthodox Church leaders demonized sex. The Gnostics did, but the orthodox did not. The Gnostics tried to hijack the true teachings of Christianity by syncretizing it with Greek philosophy. As I explained above, the Greek philosophy part made sex evil.. The Gnostics are the first so-called Christians to see sex as evil, not the Roman Catholic or Protestant Churches. And Dan Brown eulogizes the Gnostics! In all fairness relatively few Roman Catholics or Protestants ever demonized sex. The majority of Christians, for the majority of time, have seen sex as a gift of God to be used within the boundary of a heterosexual marriage. It is the misuse of God's gift of sex that is evil.

I do want to be clear here that I am not naively defending the Roman Catholic Church. It is guilty of being a self-proclaimed sole conduit to God. That is a perversion of biblical teaching. The Bible teaches that the sole conduit to God is the person of Jesus Christ, not a human institution or a sex ritual. If a person such as Dan Brown does not like the Bible's condemnation of sex outside of a heterosexual marriage relationship, then he should be fair and honest and say, "I disagree," rather than trying to make the Bible or the Gnostics say something they don't say or portraying the Church inaccurately.

Tomorrow I will finish this series with a conclusion:



What do you think?