FILMING is not yet complete on Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, but the controversy is already raging. An association called the American Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property has called on Roman Catholics to boycott the film, saying: “It attacks everything that Catholics hold sacred.”

They have the backing of the Archbishop of Genoa, who described the book as “a sackful of lies against the church and against Christ himself”. And even enlightened Catholics such as the commentator Barbara Nicolosi, who runs Act One, a seminar for Christian film-makers in Hollywood, says: “The book is particularly repulsive. It says Jesus isn’t Divine and that the Church is basically evil.”

Normally, such outrage would be all good clean fun at the box-office, but the re-election of George W. Bush on a wave of devout heartland votes and the phenomenal success of The Passion of the Christ have changed Hollywood’s thinking. The Christian moviegoer is now a recognised and lucrative demographic that Hollywood cannot afford to ignore.

Columbia Studios, which is making The Da Vinci Code, clearly feels that it cannot count on divine protection. It has called on the services of Grace Hill Media to help to prepare the groundwork for the film, which is to be released next summer, and defuse controversy.

Grace Hill is a Hollywood publicity firm run by Jonathan Bock, a former sitcom writer and Presbyterian, that specialises in targeting modern Christian moviegoers. The statistic that he impresses on studio executives is that five times as many people go to church in America every week as go to the movies. The movies are a $10 billion a year industry; the Church collects 24 times that amount annually.

Grace Hill helps studios to select which uplifting, non-profane films will appeal to Christians and the Christian movie media. This latter group of watchdogs and critics has formed a close-knit internet community through sites such as Hollywoodjesus.com (“pop culture from a spiritual point of view”) and GodSpy.com (“faith at the edge”). Grace Hill invites Christian critics to screenings and press junkets, and helps to winkle out a film’s faith-friendly aspects.

“We promote films with a moral message,” says Bock. “Films that encourage people to lead better lives, that explore God, hope or faith.”

Different films, of course, demand the attentions of specialised consultants. The Da Vinci Code, for example, requires an expertise unlike that needed for a charming comedy such as Elf. The films that Bock has worked on include Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott’s recent Crusades epic, Signs, with Mel Gibson as a former priest, and A Walk to Remember, a teenage hit that featured a Christian protagonist. Bock has also been involved with Lord of the Rings. Elf was sold to Christian critics as a fable about “the light inside of us that never dies”.

Grace Hill also conducts “stealth” promotions using the growing network of Christian bloggers, who vet films based on their profanity and spiritual content. Cinderella Man, for example, starring Russell Crowe as a Depression-era boxer, was supported by Grace Hill, which stressed that the story was about “inspiration, hope and faith”, and encouraged people to “share the good news”.

“Our goal is simple — we want Hollywood to make a ton of money from religious people,” says Bock. “And if they’re doing it, then that means that they are successfully tapping into those themes.”

Ted Baehr, the chairman of the Christian Film and Tele- vision Commission, says: “Three of Hollywood’s big seven studios have told us that they want to be branded as Christian-friendly.”

Certainly, studios are now making changes such as deleting or restraining profanity in family films, which can be done without upsetting the creative talents involved. But such self-censoring is a momentous shift backwards for Hollywood after four decades of determined self-expression that followed the petering out of the Protestant Film Office and the National League of Decency in the 1960s.

Some Christian groups feel that the film industry has abused the freedom that it was given after the absurd restrictions of the Hayes Code and the intimidations of the Mc-Carthy era. Yet the Christian cause for more explicitly faith-based films is not helped by the joke-like reputation of its own “Godsploitation” films.

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