Several years ago when Sim and I lived in South Carolina, we’d go out of our way to check out larger-than-life roadside signs like “Trust Jesus” or my personal favorite, “Turn to Jesus or Burn in Hell.”
Subtle eh?
This in-your-face evangelism was foreign to me, even having grown up in the Bible Belt and just graduated from a fairly conservative Christian university.
Well, it’s nice to know that not much has changed in the last decade…except the signs are getting bigger, more targeted and, well, hateful.
Take this one we saw a couple times off I-26: “Islam is Rising: Be Warned.” The billboard images are dark and ominous, no doubt meant to incite fear. I’m thinking they’ll also incite hate and intolerance.
WIS TV reports here that the signs are the handiwork of the Christian Action Network, which didn’t appear to want to talk about the signs other than to point viewers to its online anti-Islam rhetoric.
Interestingly, there’s yet another billboard debate raging just across the boarder in North Carolina. Not far from our hotel, and just down the road from the relatively new Billy Graham Library, the Secular Association has erected a billboard featuring a 1890s wording from the Pledge of Allegiance, “One Nation, Indivisible.”
According to our hosts in the city and this Fox News Charlotte story, it didn’t take long for folks around there to notice the missing words, “under God,” which were added to the Pledge in the 1950s.
Never a dull moment in the South, especially when it comes to religion and politics.
Virtual Farmgirl 