I was looking through a thesaurus a few nights ago and came across the word “unchristian.” Never having heard of this word before, I read the list of associated words.

• irreligious
• pagan
• evil

with a notation “see impious 1, wicked 1.”

Now, I just tried to look “unchristian” up on thesaurus.com, but that came up with no results, so perhaps this word has been…removed from circulation? However, I find the notion that the thesaurus, a heavily-used reference book similar to the dictionary, would imply that the opposite of being Christian is being irreligious (last time I checked, Christianity was far from being the only religion in the world), pagan, and evil, more than slightly unsettling. Evil. The opposite of being Christian is evil? 

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, and this is a very specific word used in very specific circumstances, but this is extremely disturbing to me.