Montreal, Canada - A majority of Canadians and Americans believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but a significant number think that the event marked by Easter never happened, according to a poll.
According to the Ipsos poll sponsored by the CanWest media group, 78 percent of people in the United States and 73 percent in Canada believe in the central Christian story that "Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected to eternal life."
But 13 percent of Americans and 17 percent of Canadians hold that Jesus' death on the cross "was faked", and that, as portrayed in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," Jesus was also married and had a family, according to the poll.
"That belief has been around as part of a Gnostic tradition for about a thousand of years, but it really had not been popularized until 'The Da Vinci Code' really hit the mainstream," Ipsos senior vice president Andrew Grenville told AFP.
That shows "the power of story, the power of a novel to change and shape opinion," he said.
However, he expressed surprise at the high number of those apparently influenced by the ideas in the novel, which has been made into a movie soon to be released.
"I am shocked frankly that it is high as 13 percent in the US, because the US is one of the most religious nations in the world. In terms of the nature of its Christianity, it is one of the more conservative because of the large number of Evangelicals," Grenville said.
Taken last week, the poll surveyed nearly 1,600 people in Canada and the United States and held a margin of error of 3.5 percent.