Paul and Jan Crouch are based in Costa Mesa, Calif. Their Trinity Broadcasting Network collects more than $120 million a year from viewers of its Christian programming — more than any other TV ministry. Crouch calls his version of the prosperity gospel “God’s economy of giving.”

Kenneth and Gloria Copeland are based in Fort Worth, Texas. Their television show, Believer’s Voice of Victory, reaches at least 76 million households in the United States and airs on 135 international stations.

Read a Catholic Answers post assessing what is fact and what is fiction in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

The Rev. John Wauck is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He lives in Rome, where he teaches literature and the Christian faith at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. Wauck has blogged about The Da Vinci Code.

Amy Welborn was a teacher of theology in Catholic high schools and is author of many books including De-coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of The Da Vinci Code (Our Sunday Visitor, 2004), a Catholic response to the novel, and De-Coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legend and Lies (Our Sunday Visitor, 2006).

The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (Touchstone, 1998 first edition) is a book proposing the types of relationships had between Jesus, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. It was was reissued in 2004, as a result of interest in author Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.” The […]

Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code, edited by Connecticut-based journalist Daniel Burstein, compiles research on topics in Brown’s novel, made best-seller lists and has been translated into more than 20 languages.

Bart D. Ehrman wrote Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine and teaches religious studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Ehrman can place Mary of Nazareth in her historical and modern-day context.

Elaine Pagels is the author of the best-selling Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Random House, 2003) and a professor of religion at Princeton University. She has written a number of well-received books on gnosticism, an early Christian movement considered heretical, and early Christianity. Additionally, she is the author of  The Origin of Satan (1996).