A.D. on Louisiana Diplomas by Dave Miller, Ph.D.

http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=1532

A.D. on Louisiana Diplomas

by	Dave Miller, Ph.D.

Louisiana’s education superintendent has ordered the recall and destruction of 53,000 blank high school diplomas because the date was changed from A.D. (“the year of our Lord”) to C.E. (the nonreligious “common era”). The change had been made by a department committee that acted without the authorization of the Louisiana Education Superintendent. The department committee assumed that eliminating a reference to God was merely an administrative change that did not require authorization. The superintendent is to be congratulated for challenging their assumption.

Should America abandon A.D. and B.C. (“Before Christ”) in deference to those who reject the Christian worldview? To do so would be to abandon the very foundations of American civilization. It would be to abandon the foundational document of the country—the United States Constitution. How so? Just prior to the listing of the 39 signatories—men who placed their signatures on this paramount document as indication of their approval of its contents—the Constitution’s own closing remark reads:

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names (“The U.S. Constitution,” emp. added).

If the Louisiana education department committee had been providing students with copies of the federal Constitution, would they have ordered the printer to censor it as well?

REFERENCES

Mobley, Amber (2005), “Diploma Recall Shouldn’t Affect Local Graduations, Officials Say,” The Shreveport Times, May 4, [On-line], URL: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050504/ NEWS01/505040313/1002/NEWS.

The U.S Constitution, [On-line], URL: http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html.