Wisconsin may open another battlefield in the U.S. “culture wars” with a bill that State Sen. Tom Reynolds (R-West Allis) introduced on Jan. 18.
This measure, 2005 Senate Bill 506, “prohibits a school board from adopting any textbook that uses the terms ‘C.E.’ or ‘common era’ and ‘B.C.E.’ or ‘before the common era,’ instead of ‘A.D.’ and ‘B.C.,’ when referring to years,” according to the analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau.
At issue is one of the more pervasive influences of Christianity in Western culture. For more than 1,000 years, the Western calendar has counted years from what a medieval monk calculated to have been the year of the birth of Jesus.
The years since then have been called in many documents and textbooks A.D., which stands for the Latin “Anno Domini,” or “Year of the Lord,” while the years prior are called B.C., or “Before Christ.”
However, in academia and elsewhere (including the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle), these terms are often replaced with B.C.E. and C.E., standing for “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era,” respectively. These do not change the year count, but do try to minimize the Christian religious content of the Western calendar.
The Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia quotes linguist Peter Daniels as saying that this change came about “in the last few decades, perhaps originally in Near Eastern studies, where (a) there are many Jewish scholars and (b) dating according to a Christian era is irrelevant. It is indeed a question of sensitivity.”
Moreover, this difference apparently is an issue in interfaith relations. The Web site of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance says this organization uses B.C.E. and C.E. because “they are less hurtful to non-Christians.”
And it does this even though “we probably get more critical e-mails about the use of C.E. and B.C.E. than about any other single topic except homosexuality, abortion in the Bible and whether Roman Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are actually Christians.”
Which might make this a matter of purely academic or interfaith relations interest — except that, as he told The Chronicle in a telephone interview Tuesday, one of Reynolds’ constituents raised the issue during a recent “listening session” in his district.
That prompted Reynolds to look into the matter, and he found that “there now is not a single textbook publisher at college level that has not replaced B.C. and A.D.” in its dating, he said. Moreover, “the consensus out there was that we’re going to start to see this in high school text books.”
So Reynolds introduced this bill “so there would be at least some discussion of it.” He said he wants to have the legislature discuss and debate “Why is the traditional method of dating disappearing?” and “Should the legislature do something to preserve it or not?”
Reynolds also questioned the issue of sensitivity or courtesy to non-Christians in the matter. “Is it not a discourtesy to Christians to say that the method of dating used for 200 years” should be changed, he asked.
“To me this is very similar to the push in the 1970s” to change U.S. measurements to the metric system, which failed due to popular resistance, Reynolds said.
Michael Blumenfeld, director of the Wisconsin Jewish Conference, alerted The Chronicle and others to Reynolds’ bill, and said the organization will discuss taking a position on it at its next board meeting on Feb. 5.
Blumenfeld said the bill is unlikely to pass, largely because of the cost to schools of making such changes.
Reynolds, however, said that because textbook publishers are just starting to make the transition to B.C.E. and C.E., the passage of his bill would not impose any additional costs to schools involved, which would just have to refuse to accept the new books. In fact, passage would send a message to publishers not to make the dating style changes if they wanted their books used in Wisconsin, he said.
The bill is currently in the State Senate Education Committee, and Reynolds is “trying to see if the committee chair would schedule a hearing.”
Blumenfeld said he has not heard of any similar move in any other U.S. state legislature. Wikipedia reports some recent public controversies have occurred over this issue in Australia, Great Britain and Canada.
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