The measurement of time and its description have always appeared problematic and maybe for this reason the issue has always been tinged by religion. The conventional way of measuring time — and this is accepted in most parts of the civilized world — is to take the coming of Jesus Christ as a benchmark and to break up time into before and after this epoch-making event. Thus Anno Domini — the year of our Lord — and before Christ. Even non-Christians, for whom the birth of Christ is of little or of no significance, have accepted this way of dividing and denoting time. A Christian way of looking at time has become the universal way of looking at time. This has been possible because of the dominance the West and its forms of thought have exerted over the rest of the world from the 16th century onwards. In India, for example, indigenous forms of looking at time or indigenous calendars survive only for observing religious functions and festivals. For all other forms of daily activities the Christian calendar — BC and AD — is used. It is ironic that what was originally a Christian way of looking at time, as indicated by the very terms BC and AD, has become the marker for secular time.

One way out of this is to do away with the terms BC and AD and to replace them with Before the Common Era and Common Era. Those who use these new terms — and their number is growing — argue that BCE and CE are religiously neutral and therefore more acceptable. Very recently, much to the annoyance of the Vatican, the BBC advised its presenters to avoid BC and AD and to use BCE and CE. The ethics advisers of the Beeb felt that this replacement would cause less offence to non-Christians. The Holy See obviously feels that the BBC is following a line of “aggressive secularism”. The quoted words are those of Pope Benedict XVI. It is quite obvious that by preferring terms that are not imbued with religion, the BBC is opting for political correctness and attempting to reach out to its many non-Christian viewers and listeners. The moot question is: are the new terms religiously neutral?

The terms BCE and CE replace BC and AD only in a nominal sense. The Common Era still begins when AD began and BCE denotes the same period which was previously described as BC. Thus the same benchmark — the birth of Christ — is being used to divide time. What is more, what was previously associated overtly with an event in the history of Christianity is now being called the Common Era. A Christian way of describing time is being called Common simply because it has become conventional to measure time in the Christian method. This is not a genuinely secular move but only a change in nomenclature. It should be seen only as a first step till scholars discover a more secular way of measuring and describing time.