BY STEPHANIE AKIN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
Drivers approaching the Lincoln Tunnel this holiday season will be the targets of an atheist advertisement that its sponsors describe as a strike against Christmas.
A billboard scheduled to be displayed near the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel until the end of the holidays shows a silhouetted manger scene with the message, “You KNOW it’s a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.”
The $20,000 campaign, sponsored by a national organization called American Atheists, is timed to preempt annual accusations that liberal groups are waging war on Christmas by asking church adherents to question their holiday traditions, American Atheists President David Silverman said.
“If the religious right wants a war on Christmas, this is what they’re going to get,” he said. “If they want a war on Christmas, we’re going to make sure they know what one looks like.”
The campaign is one of several atheist media blitzes scheduled this holiday season.
It joins a $200,000 national television, newspaper and magazine advertising campaign sponsored by the American Humanist Association and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation meant to challenge biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity.
Those ads juxtapose passages from religious texts selected because they appear to advocate for “fear, hatred and intolerance,” with quotations from humanist scholars that promote “love, equality, peace, freedom and reason,” according to a press release.
The American Humanist Association sponsored a 48-foot sign erected on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2008 that read, “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.”
The campaigns come on the heels of studies reporting that rising numbers of Americans identify themselves as non-religious — 15 percent in 2008 compared with 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the Trinity College American Religious Identification Survey.
The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life reported in April, however, that of the 5 percent of its survey respondents who said they do not believe in God or a universal spirit, only 24 percent actually identified themselves as atheists.
Silverman said his group interprets such numbers as a sign that the country is on the verge of an explosive growth in secularism.
Many of those potential secularists live in the New York-New Jersey area, Silverman said. The Lincoln Tunnel billboard, one of several the organization plans in the next year, was placed where it thinks generally affluent and highly educated commuters will have plenty of time to think about it as they inch their way through one of the most chronically clogged roadways in the region.
The message is meant to address what Silverman described as closet atheists: people who attend religious services during the holidays without believing in them.
“Stay home,” Silverman said. “Don’t give the church money. Don’t give the church power. Tell the truth to your friends and families.”
Such campaigns have already received one public response from a prominent Christian organization. The New York-based Catholic League reportedly sent statues of Nativity scenes to the governors of all 50 states, asking them to place them in their rotundas in response to atheists “out in force this year trying to neuter Christmas.”
Catholic League spokesman Bill Donohue could not be reached for comment.
Newark Archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness said he is aware of the billboard — his son passed it on his way home from a family Thanksgiving meal Thursday night — and that he isn’t impressed.
He added that the archdiocese declined an offer to buy a rival billboard, stating that it has more constructive ways to spend its money. The message of Christmas is too resilient to be threatened by a sign, Goodness said.
“We’re looking at well over 2,000 years of this message being part of humanity,” Goodness said. “One message on a billboard that’s going to be there for a month isn’t going to change that.”
E-mail: akin@northjersey.comDrivers approaching the Lincoln Tunnel this holiday season will be the targets of an atheist advertisement that its sponsors describe as a strike against Christmas.
TARIQ ZEHAWI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A billboard sponsored by the American Atheists and posted in North Bergen, on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, reads: 'You KNOW it's a Myth. This season, celebrate REASON.'
A billboard scheduled to be displayed near the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel until the end of the holidays shows a silhouetted manger scene with the message, “You KNOW it’s a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.”
The $20,000 campaign, sponsored by a national organization called American Atheists, is timed to preempt annual accusations that liberal groups are waging war on Christmas by asking church adherents to question their holiday traditions, American Atheists President David Silverman said.
“If the religious right wants a war on Christmas, this is what they’re going to get,” he said. “If they want a war on Christmas, we’re going to make sure they know what one looks like.”
The campaign is one of several atheist media blitzes scheduled this holiday season.
It joins a $200,000 national television, newspaper and magazine advertising campaign sponsored by the American Humanist Association and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation meant to challenge biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity.
Those ads juxtapose passages from religious texts selected because they appear to advocate for “fear, hatred and intolerance,” with quotations from humanist scholars that promote “love, equality, peace, freedom and reason,” according to a press release.
The American Humanist Association sponsored a 48-foot sign erected on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2008 that read, “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.”
The campaigns come on the heels of studies reporting that rising numbers of Americans identify themselves as non-religious — 15 percent in 2008 compared with 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the Trinity College American Religious Identification Survey.
The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life reported in April, however, that of the 5 percent of its survey respondents who said they do not believe in God or a universal spirit, only 24 percent actually identified themselves as atheists.
Silverman said his group interprets such numbers as a sign that the country is on the verge of an explosive growth in secularism.
Many of those potential secularists live in the New York-New Jersey area, Silverman said. The Lincoln Tunnel billboard, one of several the organization plans in the next year, was placed where it thinks generally affluent and highly educated commuters will have plenty of time to think about it as they inch their way through one of the most chronically clogged roadways in the region.
The message is meant to address what Silverman described as closet atheists: people who attend religious services during the holidays without believing in them.
“Stay home,” Silverman said. “Don’t give the church money. Don’t give the church power. Tell the truth to your friends and families.”
Such campaigns have already received one public response from a prominent Christian organization. The New York-based Catholic League reportedly sent statues of Nativity scenes to the governors of all 50 states, asking them to place them in their rotundas in response to atheists “out in force this year trying to neuter Christmas.”
Catholic League spokesman Bill Donohue could not be reached for comment.
Newark Archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness said he is aware of the billboard — his son passed it on his way home from a family Thanksgiving meal Thursday night — and that he isn’t impressed.
He added that the archdiocese declined an offer to buy a rival billboard, stating that it has more constructive ways to spend its money. The message of Christmas is too resilient to be threatened by a sign, Goodness said.
“We’re looking at well over 2,000 years of this message being part of humanity,” Goodness said. “One message on a billboard that’s going to be there for a month isn’t going to change that.”
E-mail: akin@northjersey.com
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