A First for Missouri!
A 14x48-foot billboard, carrying the John Lennonesque theme, "Imagine No Religion," with a stained-glass window backdrop, went up today for one month in West St. Louis County (in Manchester, Mo., at approximately 14030 Manchester Road, just west of the intersection with Weidman Road).
This is the first billboard placed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Missouri as part of a national educational campaign. The Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), and works to keep church and state separate. The state/church watchdog has 13,900 members, and more than 200 members in the "Show Me State."
"We'd like to invite everyone to imagine a world free from religious wars, sectarian strife, and superstition," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president.
"Like John Lennon, I've found that nature and reality are enough for me. I also like to imagine no hell below us, above us only sky. The only afterlife that should concern us is a secure and pleasant future for our descendants," said Dan Barker, Foundation co-president and author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One's America's Leading Atheists (Ulysses Press, 2008).
The Foundation has placed billboards in about 18 states and more than 28 cities since launching its educational campaign in late 2007. It is now launching a national bus sign campaign.