Australia is to remove the birth of Jesus as a reference point for dates in school history books.
Under the new politically correct curriculum, the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) will be replaced with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).
The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, yesterday condemned the move as an ‘intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history.’
Peter Jensen, The Archbishop of Sydney
He described the phrase ‘common era’ as ‘meaningless,’ and compared it to using ‘festive season’ instead of Christmas.
The changes, introduced by the government, were supposed to be pushed through next year, but have been delayed by the row.
The terms CE and BCE have been popularised in academic and scientific publications.
One of Australia’s political party leaders, Christopher Pyne, also registered his objections:
‘Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilization,’ he said.
‘Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people,’ he added.
Evidently, as Pyne asserts, it really was political correctness that led to this latest attempt to elide the influence of Jesus Christ on history:
The terms CE and BCE became popular in academic and scientific publications in the late 20th century.
They were used by publishers to emphasise secularism or sensitivity to non-Christians . . .
Under the new politically correct curriculum, the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) will be replaced with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).
