The spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Dr Rowan Williams has spoken out against any impact that The Da Vinci Code will have on people’s faith in the Gospel.

|TOP|Giving his Easter message on Sunday, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated that the huge public appetite for revisionist stories such as The Da Vinci Code should not weaken the truth of the Gospel.

Over recent years there has been an increased number of conspiracy theories regarding religion and in particular Christianity. The Da Vinci Code, written by Dan Brown, has been one of the most highly controversial of these, and it imposes theories that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child.

Although the book has been factually rebuked by religious experts, it has sold more than 40 million copies around the world since it was first published in 2003.

Dr Williams said, “One of the ways in which we now celebrate the great Christian festivals is by a little flurry of newspaper articles and television programmes raking over the coals of controversies about the historical basis of faith.”

|AD|Addressing the 70-million member Anglican Communion across the globe in his Easter exhortation, the Archbishop of Canterbury said “saturation coverage of the Da Vinci Code literature” coupled with the recent promotion of the ‘Gospel of Judas’ revealed a widespread desire for the public to expose conspiracies.

He continued, “We are instantly fascinated by the suggestion of conspiracies and cover-ups; this has become so much the stuff of our imagination these days that it is only natural, it seems, to expect it when we turn to ancient texts, especially biblical texts.

“Anything that looks like the official version is automatically suspect,” he said.

However, Dr Williams stated that such stories and theories, although were greatly appealing and enthralling, they did not help in “understanding what the New Testament writers are actually saying and why.”

The Archbishop concluded by saying that the Bible was “not the authorised code of a society managed by priests and preachers for their private purposes, but the set of human words through which the call of God is still uniquely immediate to humans today.”