BCE/CE vs BC/AD

I am always amazed when people who are interested in secularizing a part of our society endeavor to turn a religion’s own teachings upon itself as a way of justifying the proposed secularization. Why after so many centuries of using BC and AD is it suddenly important to dispense with the reference?

Perhaps the reason really isn’t about standardizing the time annotation for all concerned as much as it is about removing religious references in the secular arena. What is it about religion that makes those who consider themselves to be “non-believers” feel that they must refute and/or eliminate all religious references from the public arena? As a way of validating the movement towards secularism, advocates seek to find as many opportunities as possible to bolster the secular argument, regardless of whether each opportunity truly resides in religion or if it has due to the passage of time transcended it’s religious connotation. Thus we come back to BC and AD.

I wonder how many everyday people even know what AD stands for? Moreover if they know that it means anno Domine do they in turn know what that translates into? I think most people know it makes reference to Christ, but they think of it more in the secular sense regarding the notation of time. It seems rather extended to assume that each person whether Christian or non-Christian takes a moment to reflect on the religious meaning of BC and AD whenever in their daily lives they happen to encounter them.

If you take a moment to consider the use of BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era)you’re confronted with an initial desire to understand why BC and AD are unacceptable. It’s here that the flimsy foundation of logic from which BCE and CE were born rears it’s misguided head. Who is to say what actually dictates the beginning of the Common Era. Perhaps the 16th Century would be a better point of separation. After all the development of global trade truly harkened in a new era for mankind. Maybe someone else has a better point of separation. The issue at hand is simple. BCE and CE are arbitrary renamings of the same time scale except they seem to make reference to some moment in time where the Common Era began. You can’t, however, find any historical references to the Common Era. Why? Because it’s simply an attempt to mask the Christian basis for the dating system. This contrived masking supposedly makes the Western calendar less unsettling for non-Christians. Of course most of the people in different parts of the world who might be offended by BC/AD have adopted different ways to mark the passage of time anyway. The Chinese calendar counts years from the reign of the Yellow Emperor in 2698 BC. The Islamic calendar counts years from 622 AD when Muhammad left Mecca. The year 2000 in our calendar is 4698 in the Chinese calendar and 1421 in the Islamic calendar. I’m sure those measuring time based on Muhammad’s departure aren’t too miffed by BC/AD.

Truth be said BCE and CE use the same event in time as does BC and AD in order to separate one from the other - the birth of Christ. Those who developed the new terminology were less concerned with developing a non-Christian manner of measuring time based on historical events and more concerned with obscuring the historically Christian basis of the dating system. If this were not the case, surely those savvy sensitive chaps would have discarded the whole system rather than seek to change a few abbreviations.

At the end of the day people in Western cultures use a time nomenclature that harkens back to the bedrock of Western culture - Christianity whether you like it or not. No historical fiction, masking of abbreviations, or historical revisionism will ever change that simple fact. So for the sake of ease, simplicity, and historical accuracy BC and AD it is!