It’s beginning to look a lot like an atheist Christmas in parts of the South — including the Augusta area.
New Jersey-based American Atheists on Friday launched a billboard campaign that encourages people to celebrate Christmas by not going to church.
Two different billboards — one of which is a parody of president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign slogan the declares “Make Christmas Great Again!” — will be up in six different locations throughout the month of December. Motorists on 1-20 West, northeast of Augusta, will see the other billboard, which features a text message exchange between two young women.
One of them LOL-ingly shares her intention to skip church this Christmas.
“What will your parents say,” the other wonders.
“They’ll get over it,” the first young woman assures her.
But will everyone else — well, drivers in and around the other billboards's locations in Lynchburg, Va., Shreveport, La., Georgetown, S.C. and Colorado Springs — also take it in stride? The campaign's already getting some pushback, including from Christian Examiner, which described such efforts as "poking their collective finger in the eye of Christians across the United States at Christmastime."
Yet American Atheists points to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute showing that a quarter of Americans and almost 40 percent of young people are atheist or “non-religious.” Yet because they sometimes still feel the need to call themselves religious or attend services, the billboard campaign is aimed specifically at those people.
“The only way to remove the stigma is to show our friends and family that we are the same kind, loving and compassionate people they’ve always known us to be,” said Nick Fish, national program director for American Atheists, which describes its function as defending the civil rights of atheists, freethinkers and other nonbelievers. “This billboard campaign will be a starting point for that conversation in communities where atheists don’t always have a voice.”
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