Secularizing the calendar!?
The latest controversy to emerge at the intersection of public schools and Christianity concerns our dating system. A movement in my old school district is protesting the use of BCE / CE (instead of BC / AD) to teach kids about dates in history. “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era” are less offensive to non-Christians than “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini,” which is Latin for “in the year of the Lord.”
But there’s just no getting around the fact that BCE / CE are simply secularized labels referring to Christ’s suggested birth date. We shouldn’t feel too guilty about that, however, because most calendars are built around some otherwise arbitrary date of particular cultural importance.
We’re probably stuck with the date, but should we be stuck with the religious trappings? Like so many of these controversies, from school prayer, “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, “In God We Trust” on our currency, creationism in biology class, and the annual “War on Christmas,” the arguments are couched in language of cultural heritage – this has always been a Christian nation, so it goes, and efforts to “secularize” its institutions are either paternalistic or morally destabilizing.
Those in favor of church-state separation usually counter that in a society of many faiths and traditions, public representations of a particular faith must either be removed, like religious displays in courthouses, or secularized when useful for publicly justifiable reasons – like Christmas or having Sundays off. Regardless of our historical legacy (which is decidedly more complicated than most allow), liberals must weigh matters of cultural importance against the heavy counterweights of free conscience, association, and equal treatment.
-Colin
Related posts:
- What the Framers intended
- Religious Holidays for Everyone!
- Reason and faith in higher education
- National identity
- The (im)possibility of secular judgment
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