State News

'Under God' missing from secularist billboards

High above the Billy Graham Parkway in Charlotte, a North Carolina group is making a claim on patriotism without piety.

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One Nation Indivisible
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — High above the Billy Graham Parkway in Charlotte, a North Carolina group is making a claim on patriotism without piety.

The North Carolina Secular Association has paid for a series of billboards which will go up in the weeks before the Fourth of July.

The billboards, which cost $15,000, show an American flag and the words "One Nation, Indivisible." They omit the words "under God," which have been part of the Pledge of Allegiance since 1954.

Multiple media outlets report that besides Charlotte, the group has billboards going up in Wilmington, Asheville, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Raleigh.

Group founder Joseph McDaniel Stewart says the goal is to show that nonbelievers can be just as patriotic as believers.

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