The Freedom From Religion Foundation plans to put messages on 50 billboards in metro Atlanta this week as part of a blitz through the Bible Belt shunning religion and advocating separation of church and state.
The signs, which will be up for a month, are planned in DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb counties. Other cities targeted by the Wisconsin-based nonprofit are Louisville, New Orleans and Tulsa.
Messages include: " Imagine No Religion” and “Sleep In On Sundays.” One quotes the late Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, who played the maid Prissy in "Gone with the Wind.” McQueen, who was an atheist, said: “As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.”
Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said the educational nonprofit hopes the "splash" in Atlanta will break through a taboo surrounding criticism of religion.
“You can talk about everything else, but you sure aren’t supposed to say anything bad about religion,” Gaylor said.
Craig Gleason, a Johns Creek musician, said the billboards are doing what many who are non-religious accuse Christians and others of doing – proselytizing.
They want “to get people to come across to their way of thinking,” he said. Gleason said he was once an agnostic, someone who doesn't believe in either the existence or nonexistence of God, but is now a Christian.
“You folks don’t have a clue who you’re messing with,” he said of the foundation. “You’re not messing with Craig Gleason or the little church on the corner. This is between you and the Creator.”
Perry Mitchell, a retired ad agency executive who lives in Druid Hills, is a foundation member who says he knows it may offend some people. “I just feel like any group has the right to espouse their own ideas and beliefs and the Freedom from Religion Foundation has that right as well as any church or synagogue.”
Mitchell said he grew up a Methodist but became an atheist nearly 50 years ago. He began questioning religion with the start of the civil rights movement when members of his church didn’t want blacks to attend.
Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta agrees that campaign is provocative.
"Unfortunately, these folks are missing the opportunity to have allies in the religious community who are free thinking by having such antagonistic tag lines," Lesser said. "It’s good marketing, but I don’t think good marketing always makes for good relationships.”
Don Kemp of Suwanee has seen the billboards in other cities. He thinks the message is flawed, but the organization has the right to express it.
"Freedom from religion? I think that’s a pipe dream,” said Kemp, a business owner, who is a Christian.
The foundation has more than 16,000 members nationally and 270 in Georgia. It is the same organization behind a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Day of Prayer.
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