Many words associated with Christianity have been removed from a children’s dictionary in Britain. Come on! Tell me you’re surprised.

Oxford University Press has excised words like “aisle,” “Saint,” “devil,” “bishop,” and “chapel” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog,” “interdependent” and “celebrity,” says The UK Telegraph.

The publisher, of course, says they have absolutely nothing against Christianity but says the dictionary must reflect the fact that Britain is a “modern, multicultural, multifaith society.”

I love that word “modern.” Never has a word so bereft of definition carried so much weight for an ideology.

Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it…When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don’t go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as “Pentecost” or “Whitsun” would have been in 20 years ago but not now.”

Words taken out include: Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, and vicar.

Words put in: Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro.

I’ll tell you, in a world where I had to choose between those two word sets I’d pick the first one every day.

But I hope the Oxford folks are enjoying themselves in these “modern” times because with news that many native Brits are reproducing far below replacement rates while the Muslim populations are doubling themselves with each generation it won’t be long before they’re forced to remove words like “modern” and “multicultural” and replace them with “sharia” and “infidel.”