Billboard Education about Religion and Government

Most of the space on this blog is devoted to the notion that in the "conventional wisdom" of today, we have been led to believe that religion may not be heard in the public square. Certainly, we are told, it may not be part of ANY government action, display, or meeting from the Federal level down to the level of local libraries.

A group in Hillsborough, Florida, is trying to educate the public via renting space on billboards. Mostly they are putting up simple messages, focusing on the words you have already seen in this blog - words of our founders and later government leaders uttered about the religious roots of our country. For example:

George Washington: Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principle.

U.S. Supreme Court: ...this is a Christian nation.

John Adams: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

The group has been criticized because they used a quote attributed to George Washington (not the one shown above) that can not be verified. They have admitted it was a mistake to use that one, although they got it from a source, wallbuilders.org, that has hundreds of similar quotes by historic figures that ARE accurate and documented. Wallbuilders has confirmed that the Washington quote in question can not be verified. Most of the articles I have seen criticizing the billboard campaign focus on this one questionable quote as a reason to taint the entire campaign. To me it's more important where the group goes from here. I assume they will tighten their standards on authentication, in which case they could very well make a positive impact.

Read more on the group's website:

www.noseparation.org/