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It took a few days for them to get to the job. But, once in position Thursday morning, a crew from Lamar billboard company quickly replaced a defaced sign that had been put up along Billy Graham Parkway by the N.C. Secular Association, a state coalition of atheist, agnostic and free thinker groups.
The crew folded a new vinyl onto the billboard space that reads "One Nation Indivisible." That's the original phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892, before the words "under God" were added after "one nation" by an act of Congress in 1954.
Last weekend, vandals climbed up the ladder leading to the secular group's billboard and spray-painted the words "under God" and an arrow pointing to "One Nation."
The N.C. Secular Association is putting the same "One Nation Indivisible" billboard up in five other N.C. cities. But the one in Charlotte was controversial because it was put up along a road named for the Charlotte-based evangelist whop preached to millions in the United States and around the world.
A spokesman for Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics, one of the secular groups in the state coalition, has said the location of the Charlotte billboard was based on price, availability and visibility, and was not meant to be a slap at Graham, who's now 91. Set to be up for four weeks, the billboards around the state - costing a total of $15,000 - also feature an American flag in the background.
They are a July 4 project designed to show that nonreligious North Carolinians are patriots, too.
"We're doing this to raise the consciousness of the people of North Carolina," said William Warren of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics. "We want to let them know that not everybody here is religious. There are atheists in North Carolina, and we expect to be recognized and treated like everybody else."
"Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance at the height of the Cold War and was meant to distinguish the United States from the Soviet Union, which officially embraced atheism.
