Freethinking Billboards

Throughout the U.S., and especially in rural areas, billboards that promote Christianity and faith-based messages often dot the landscape. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison, WI-based group that espouses evolution and opposes government sanctioning of religion, used the medium to advocate its agenda.

In anticipation of February 12, the 200th birthday of evolutionary theory’s founding father, Charles Darwin, and 2009’s sesquicentennial milestone of Darwin’s seminal evolution tome, The Origin of Species, the foundation purchased billboards in Madison and several cities where church-and-state separation battles have flared.

Adams Outdoor’s Madison office designed the 22 x 10-ft. “Praise Darwin” billboards with appropriations of such Biblical iconography as stained glass, a traditional, English Gothic font and a red first letter enveloped with ornate flourishes. Adams installed the billboards in Dayton, TN, where the landmark Scopes Monkey Trail that established the constitutional right to teach evolution took place in 1925; Dover, PA, where a judge’s 2005 ruling barred the creationist “intelligent design” theory from the classroom; and Whitehall, OH and Grand Junction, CO, where the group objected to local officials’ prayer before city meetings and refusal to observe “Darwin Day.”