Christian groups try to block film

Anger over “The Da Vinci Code,” premiering today at the Cannes Film Festival, escalated Tuesday as Christian groups from South Korea, Thailand, Greece and India planned boycotts, a hunger strike and attempts to block or shorten screenings.

In South Korea, which has 13 million Protestants and 4.6 million Roman Catholics, a court ruled Tuesday that a Christian group’s request for an injunction to block screenings lacked merit. The Christian Council of Korea, an umbrella group of 63 South Korean Protestant denominations, said it respected the ruling but would lead a boycott of the movie, which it said defiles the sanctity of Jesus Christ and distorts facts.

In Thailand, Christian groups demanded that government censors cut the film’s final 15 minutes, fix subtitles that are supposedly disrespectful to Jesus and screen messages before and after the movie saying the content is fictional.

In mostly Hindu India, which is also home to 18 million Roman Catholics, Joseph Dias, head of the Catholic Secular Forum, began a hunger strike in downtown Bombay and said other people were joining him.

The government has put a temporary ban on the movie’s release there because of complaints.

In Athens, some 200 religious protesters, waving crucifixes and Greek flags, demonstrated Tuesday. The protesters -- including Orthodox monks and nuns -- later marched to parliament.

The plot of the movie, adapted from Dan Brown’s worldwide bestseller, makes the case that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children with her -- information that the Catholic Church then covered up.

In the United States, most Christian church leaders have adopted a different strategy. Rather than calling for boycotts or bans, they are giving sermons and sponsoring discussion groups to point out what they consider to be the story’s many flaws.