The hospital I work in is on hallowed ground. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean literally the building in which I am typing this post used to be a catholic hospital and all around me are the buildings from a long ago time when this was, for lack of a better word, a catholic complex. The original catholic church for my town is next door and the only one of the building still being used for its original purpose. The convent is now upper management office space and the little convent chapel (cause nuns in training aren’t allowed in the main for real church I guess) I can see outside my office window is now a meeting room.

Yep, my truck is currently parked on consecrated ground.

Normally I don’t think about it much, except on catholic holidays when the parishioners happily park in every available space, staff and patients be damned I suppose, but I noticed this morning on the front door of the church is a small American flag. Yup old glory, the old stars and bars, posted like it isn’t the very definition of irony.

Why irony, you ask?

Well according to the first amendment of the constitution of this great land there is to be no US government sanctioned or created or mandated religion. Part of the reason why people wanted to risk their lives to come to this continent as colonists was to get away from Great Britain’s mandate that all subjects of the crown will be members of the Church of England.

That is also part of the reason why those same colonists wanted to form their own country apart from the British empire. Another part was being forced to pay taxes when they had no representatives, or seats as they are called, in the House of Commons which would be something along the line of the British congress, but that is a post for another page.

What’s the big deal, you may also be asking? Well let me explain it this way.

A long time ago I was teaching a class on mythology, I believe it was, and I was using the term before or after the common area as the case may be, to discuss the time period of say ancient Greece for example (700 to 480 BCE) or Ancient Rome (625 BCE to 476 CE). After a while a student raised her hand and asked why I was using these terms and not BC or AD as she had heard her whole life.

I smiled and said, “Because not everyone is a Christian.” I thought this might settle the matter but was incorrect in my assumption.

“What difference does that make? I mean this about time not religion,” she responded.

I thought a moment about how much more class time should be wasted on this subject but ultimately decided a quick civics lesson would be beneficial. It has long been my teaching philosophy that if one student has a question most likely others do as well, and as I scanned the room the nodding heads and sparkling eyes suggested maybe the whole class had this same bone to pick with me.

“What does the acronym BC and AD stand for?” I asked only to receive a chorus of blank stairs in return, “Before Christ and After Death, right?”

I didn’t bother to wait for a response before continuing.

“Do any of you know why we use these terms in reference to the year?”

Again nothing.

“Because the Roman Catholic Church, so long ago it was actually the only Christian religion, said so. Pope Gregory , decided that because Jesus Christ’s life and death was the most important fact (yes I used air quotes) in history it should be the beginning of time and he created a calendar which he also named after himself, the Gregorian Calendar. Then as the church was the most powerful governmental force of the time, he required all Christian nations to adhere to that calendar. Add a few thousand years of crusades and wars against non Christian nations and you get a world which believes the year is 2024 (I don’t remember the actual year but you get my point).

“This came to quite a surprise to other religions such as the Hebrews who say it is the year 5784 or to the Chinese culture which believes the year is 4722.

We use the term AD or BC because, and to quote Jim Jeffries, Christianity won.”

I gazed upon the see of blank faces and wondered if I had gone too far into the weeds for their young minds.

“We as scientists still need a way to discuss the ancient past but desire to do so without offending any group or aggrandizing any other so we adopted the term before common era in lew of before Christ and common era in lew of after death.”

I still think that was one of my better lessons though that class may disagree.

The reason we don’t fly American flags outside churches or place them on church doors is the same reason we don’t use the term BC in academic work, or polite speech as my mother would say, we don’t want to give the impression that the US government endorses that religion over any other and so we do not give the impression the church supports the US government.

The former because the United States literally fought two wars with Great Britain to guarantee the right of freedom of religion.

And the later because religions and churches by their own dogma are supposed to be concerned with eternal things like deities and afterlives and not temporary things like earthy governments.

This concept to me is, to quote Thomas Jefferson, a truth self evident. Sadly it is also a truth that seems to be forgotten by too large a segment of our society today.