First up from the God machine this week is a strange fight over dating. Not the kind where two people go out for dinner and a movie, which might seem more likely to generate some kind of religious controversy, but literally how best to assign dates to historical periods of time.
In Kentucky, the state Department of Education drafted academic guidelines for public schools and recommended that teachers use C.E. and B.C.E. (“common era” and “before common era”), which have taken on broader academic use than B.C. and A.D. (“before Christ” and “anno domini”). Religious right groups howled. “This is an attempt to religiously sterilize the teaching of history in our schools,” said Martin Cothran, a policy analyst for the Family Foundation in Lexington.
This week, the state struck a compromise — Kentucky’s public schools will use all of the dating references.
A flap over whether to drop B.C. and A.D. from historical references has been settled. The state Board of Education has decided to continue using the acronyms for Before Christ and anno Domini, Latin for “In the year of the Lord.”
However, in a meeting yesterday, board members decided to supplement the traditional dating method with C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era).
The Kentucky Department of Education said they wanted students to be familiar with the increasingly common, though secular, dating methods, because C.E. and B.C.E. are likely to appear on college placement exams and in university coursework. Spokeswoman Lisa Gross said, “We wanted to make sure kids are exposed to those terms. They’re becoming more widespread.”
Academics, schmacamics, conservatives said. Combine local talk radio, some pandering from Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, and some angry Christian activists who don’t care about contemporary terminology, and Kentucky had a genuine religious controversy on its hands.
What the religious right chooses to pick fights over never ceases to amaze me.
Next up from the God machine is Judas on the comeback trail.
It’s not exactly the perfect gift for Good Friday or Easter, but the Gospel of Judas does have the virtue of relevance in giving the old, sacred story a dramatic new twist.
The discovery of this gospel, and its publication by the National Geographic Society, seems splendidly appropriate to our culture of confession, rehabilitation and publicity. If Judas can make a comeback after all these years, just about anyone can hope for salvation at the altar of public opinion. The snake in the Garden of Eden must be looking for the Web site and e-mail address of Judas’s spin doctors.
Certainly there always has been something poignant about Judas’s story. It can be argued that by betraying Jesus, Judas set salvation in motion. These writings, which date to well after the New Testament gospels, tell the story from exactly that point of view.
Judas allows Jesus to shed his human form through death and pass to a higher realm. “For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me,” Jesus tells Judas. Jesus acknowledges that Judas “will be cursed by the other generations,” but not to worry. “[Y]ou will come to rule over them,” Jesus promises.
Now that’s a great second act.
Finally, by way of Matthew Yglesias, I found these maps documenting religious traditions in American fascinating. I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to this, but I thought I’d mention it anyway, in case readers wanted to check it out.
And, of course, speaking of This Week in God, I’d like to extend best wishes to readers, whether you’re honoring Easter, Passover, or just a pleasant ol’ weekend away from work.