N. T. Wright, an Anglican Bishop and a leading British New Testament scholar, for whom I have a lot of respect, gave a lecture last year at Seattle Pacific University entitled Decoding the Da Vinci Code. I just came across a transcript of it recently, and found his introduction interesting. He explores the reasons as to why people are so susceptible to believing stories like Da Vinci Code and Left Behind, articulating it much better than I have.

Telling Fact from Fiction
It is a well-known feature of today’s culture that some people can’t tell fact from fiction. Stories abound of people who believe the characters in soap operas to be real, including tales of thousands of baby clothes being sent to radio stations after one of the fictitious characters has given birth, and of actors being attacked in the street by people angry about the bad behavior of their screen character. Within a would-be Christian subculture the same thing becomes sinister, as when millions who read the Left Behind series really do believe not only in the “rapture” as a central element of their theology but in the sociopolitical ideologies powerfully reinforced by that series. In a sense, Dan Brown represents the mirror image of LaHaye and Jenkins, reproducing in fictionalized form some of the myths of the postmodern world as LaHaye and Jenkins reproduce in fictionalized form some of the myths of the fundamentalist right.

You can read his full essay here.