The "Under God" spray-painted by vandals onto an atheist billboard on Billy Graham Parkway over the weekend won't be gone until just before July 4, a spokesman for Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics said today.
That;s how long it will take the billboard company to restore the sign, which featured an American flag background and quoted the original phgrase from the Pledge of Allegiance – "One Nation indivisible" – before "under God" was inserted after "one nation" in 1954.
“They have to print an entirely new vinyl and then schedule a crane,” said William Warren. He added that his group has reported the vandalism to Charlotte police and spoken with a nearby Shell station about letting investigators inspect video from security cameras in hopes of identifying those who defaced the billboard.
The sign, which went up a week ago, was controversial for its message and for its location along a road named for Graham, a Charlotte-born evangelist who preached to hundreds of millions worldwide.
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