London, England, Dec 9, 2008 / 01:49 am
Words associated with Christianity have been removed from an Oxford University Press children’s dictionary for the United Kingdom. Editors justified the changes by citing declining church attendance and multiculturalism.
Lisa Saunders, a mother of four from Northern Ireland, compared various editions of the Oxford Junior Dictionary after discovering that the words “moss” and “fern” had been removed from her son’s edition, the Daily Telegraph reports.
She discovered that many words associated with Christianity had been removed, in addition to words associated with the monarchy and the natural world.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the deleted Christian words include abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, and vicar.