Culture war update

April 29, 2005

Looking beyond the beltway for a moment, it appears the beloved culture war is as heated as ever across the country.

* Alabama: A Republican lawmaker recently tried to pass state legislation that would ban public school libraries from stocking plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters. “I don’t look at it as censorship,” says State Representative Gerald Allen. “I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.” Allen’s proposal ultimately did not pass the State House, not for lack of support, but because the legislature did not have a quorum when the bill came to the floor.

* In Mississippi: A new law makes it permissible for the state government to promote the Ten Commandments, the “In God We Trust” motto, and excerpts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on public property.

* In Colorado: A middle school guidance counselor was recently asked to read the Pledge of Allegiance over the school’s loudspeaker. In an attempt to be more inclusive of a diverse student body, the woman, Margo Lucero, got to the controversial part and said, “One nation, under your belief system, with liberty and justice for all.” Several local families went berserk and Lucero apologized. Jefferson County School District Superintendent Cindy Stevenson — without a hint of irony –said, “Adults should not try to influence children with their personal conscience.” (Yes, especially when other adults are trying to influence children with a different personal conscience.)

* In academia: An increasing number of scholars are shifting from B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini) to B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era). Like Bill O’Reilly hearing some store clerk wish him a “happy holidays” in December, religious activists aren’t happy. “The use of B.C.E. and C.E. is not mere verbal tweaking; rather it is integral to the leftist language police — a concerted attack on the religious foundation of our social and political order,” said Candace de Russy, a national writer on education and Catholic issues and a trustee for the State University of New York.

No, I guess we can’t all get along.

Re BC/AD v BCE/CE: This is one that I’ve always found a little odd. OK, ditching “Anno Domini” — meaning Year of Our Lord, right? — makes some sense, because using A.D. then seems to suggest, however minimally, that you’re declaring Christ to be Your Lord. But B.C.? I mean, the fact is, our Western Calendar pivots off of the (supposed) birth of Christ; doesn’t B.C. just state that fact? If you don’t like this, seems to me your argument is with the reference point, not the label. (As a non-Christian, I wouldn’t be opposed to changing the reference point to something neutral, although it hardly seems worth the effort.) And “Common Era”? I don’t get that moniker at all. Seems to me that reckoning from Christ’s birth is only “common” to those who don’t mind using that reference point in the first place.

  • I have never seen this. Is their any documentation of this trend, or is it something they just made up to complain about?

  • I’ve seen BCE quite a lot and never had a bit of trouble with it. It would be just as useful to use some other historically authenticated event to use for numbering but it would cause massive confusion if we were to change it to -oh say- the American Revolution or something. It was once quite common to number the years by the rule of the current King but that practice has all but died off in favor of a common system.
    However if it’s going to cause that much contention between the religious right and the secular community to keep using the current numbering system then maybe it IS time for a change.

  • Common Era is an awkward phrase, but it has been around for at least a decade. Where were the American Taliban when it was being coined?

  • I teach Roman history at a liberal arts college and I use the bce/ce system because from the point of view of the ancient romans, the date of the death or resurrection of Christ was utterly irrelevant. When I go to church on Sunday, as I do every Sunday, I use the bc/ad system. It takes about 2 minutes to explain the concept to undergraduates, even if you have a lot of college republicans in the class.

  • I know that the Jehovah’s Witnesses routinely use C.E./B.C.E. in their literature, but I’m not sure why or when that started.

  • If any of you care, here is the explanation of why the Jehovah’s Witnesses us C.E. and B.C.E. Logical, but nit-picky – they can be quite contrarian. I don’t know how long thay’ve used these terms, or why others might prefer them.

    “… “before the common era” and “common era” respectively. The Gregorian calendar uses the abbreviations BC and AD to mean “before Christ” and anno Domini, year of our Lord. But the year of Jesus’ birth was miscalculated, so it is not appropriate to designate dates on that time line as falling before or after Christ. But because the system has been in use throughout the world for many hundreds of years, it is pointless to change the scale. It is much easier to change the suffixes to show acknowledgment of the error. Many modern Bible scholars now agree that Jesus was born in about October of the year 2 BCE.”

  • The first two (suppressing gay lit in Alabama and promoting Jesus in Mississippi) are disturbing. The other two are hardly cause to get upset.

    The CE/BCE thing is just silly. It would be like an atheist getting upset because some said “bless you” when he sneezed, or launching a campaign against the word “goodbye” because it’s etymologically derived from “God be with you.”

    The pledge thing is even dumber. “One nation, under your belief system”? What the f— does that even mean? For one thing, shouldn’t it be “my belief system,” since the Pledge is said in the first person? For another, what’s the point of all of us announcing that the nation is “under” our belief systems? It’s meaningless. Take the God bit out if you like, but don’t replace it with blithering tripe.

  • In re Allen’s “Book Burning” Bill

    The real issue, here, is CBS’s “news” report. As run, CBS didn’t report whether the bill had any support in the legislature nor did the network report that the bill failed to pass.

    In other words CBS spent a significant part of its 20-minutes of “reporting” on a non-news non-issue.

    Note: Bills which legislators want defeated but don’t want to vote “No” on, publically, are regularly shit-canned by being called when a quorum isn’t present.

  • Add another vote against BCE/CE — from a completely non-religious voter. As others have pointed out, BC/AD has become part of the language, and it is in thousands of books written over centuries. Changing it in the name of whatever is silly at best. Like it or not, Christianity has been a part of the history of the West, as politically incorrect as it is to say so. The term “Common Era” is unnecessary, offensive to Christians, and can be interpreted as hiding other agendas, not altogether secular.

  • Today at the grocery store, I was chatting with the clerk who was wearing a “HE REIGNS” Jesus-freak T-shirt. We were both complaining about the thumping, repetitive house/techno music playing, and agreed that classical music might be less distracting.

    She cheerfully and somewhat triumphantly remarked that “I teach at a CHRISTIAN school and we discoverd that playing classical music increases math scores!”. Something about her vaguely elitist tone annoyed me, and also the way she seemed to imply that this was a Christian invention– for example, I doubt that the faceless corporation that produces the Baby Mozart tapes is Christian. My equally cheerful reply was, “Well in the public school we’ve discovered that teaching evolution increases biology and zoology scores!”. The icy look of hate on her face was… more scary than amusing or satisfying.

    Somehow what should be expected to remain in the realm of ribbing is leaking over into civil war. Not good.

  • If the “religious” person is uncomfortable with “Before Common Era” and “Common Era” because the terms seem to hint at secularism, then let them say “Before Christian Era” and “Christian Era” instead. Everybody stays happy. It’s still “BCE” and “CE”.

    (It’s like DVD: does it mean “digital video disc” or “digital versatile disc”? Hey, whatever the hell you like. No skin off my back.)

    Like Pudentilla, I teach adjunct courses in Western Civ at a small college, and I have seen the textbooks start to adopt “BCE” and “CE”. As far as explaining the concept to undergraduates goes, I have found that they do understand it — although you first have to disabuse some of them of the notion that “A.D.” stands for “after death”.

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