The decision by the Australian government to ditch the Christian calendar in school history books has been met by anger.

Instead of BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini), the curriculum will use BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) instead.

The change in abbreviations does not equate to a change in dates, but the Archbishop of Sydney the Most Rev Peter Jensen has described BCE and CE as “meaningless”.

He said the move yesterday was an “intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history”.

BCE and CE abbreviations have been in circulation for hundreds of years, but have become increasingly popular with scientists and academics in the last few decades.

According to the Daily Mail, the changes were supposed to be introduced next year but have been delayed because of the backlash.

Christopher Pyne, of the Liberal National Party, blamed political correctness for the change.

“Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilisation,” he said.

“Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people.”