The Passion of the Christ is the most popular movie in America, but David Brooks is more concerned about a hokey little novel:

Who worries you most, Mel Gibson or Mitch Albom? Do you fear Gibson, the religious zealot, the man accused of narrow sectarianism and anti-Semitism, or Albom, the guy who writes sweet best sellers like "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven?"

I worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism is always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. As any tour around the TV dial will make abundantly clear, we do not live in Mel Gibson's fire-and-brimstone universe. Instead, we live in a psychobabble nation. We've got more to fear from the easygoing narcissism that is so much part of the atmosphere nobody even thinks to protest or get angry about it....

Very deft, this -- Brooks moves the goalposts so nimbly you barely notice he's doing it. If you'd been on a desert island and had no idea what the fuss is about, you'd assume from reading this that people are up in arms about The Passion because it espouses religious conservatism. That's nonsense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Albom or his publisher restricting pre-publication copies of his novel to liberal-humanist pundits who then went on to say, in column after column, that the book is divinely inspired, while implying that adherence to its philosophy is a precondition of loyal Americanism and moral decency. I don't recall Albom or his publisher suggesting that the Dalai Lama read the book before it hit the stores and declared its depiction of the afterlife 100% accurate. And Albom's protagonist triumphs over loneliness and despair, but does he say in the book, or interviews, that those who fail to pick up the phone and call the lonely have called God's wrath down on themselves and their descendants for all time?