Ross Douthat has a column in today's New York Times about the appeal of Dan Brown's novels and the two blockbuster movies they've inspired. Suspense is one ingredient; so is a well-varnished conspiracy theory. But that, Douthat says, is only part of it:

The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion dont suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religions dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God whos too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money theyre making or how many times theyve been married. These are Dan Browns kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus whos a thoroughly modern sort of messiah sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.But the success of this message which also shows up in the work of Browns many thriller-writing imitators cant be separated from its dishonesty. The secret history of Christendom that unspools in The Da Vinci Code is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling theyre far, far weirder than that nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John jealous, demanding, apocalyptic may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but hes the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.