An upset former councilor in Alabama is vowing to get his town to again blatantly engage in Christian messaging.
FFRF last summer asked the town of Sylvania to remove welcome signs that read, “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” a biblical quotation from the book of Ephesians.
Local officials got rid of the unconstitutional slogan.
“The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government sponsorship of religious messages,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sam Grover said in his Aug. 6 letter to then-Sylvania Mayor Emily Wooten.
Wooten responded to inform FFRF that the signs were being taken down.
But recently former councilman Tony Goolesby proclaimed, “I intend for that bible verse to go back up on our sign or some statement of God.”
The town originally promised to remove the religious signs in 2012, after FFRF had complained back then. But if the signs came down in 2012, they were soon put back up, and remained that way until FFRF complained again in August 2015.
“Adherence to the Constitution is not an optional exercise,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “Sylvania cannot again be in violation of our founding principles just because of a few disgruntled residents.”
