Football is religion in the Deep South, but one Georgia school district is accused of taking it to the extreme.
Madison County High School near Athens, Ga. is drawing biblical ire from two atheist groups after the district installed a granite monument inscribed with religious messages at a new football field.
The Freedom From Religious Foundation and the American Humanist Association have asked Madison County school officials to remove the two-ton sculpture based on the constitutional call for a separation between church and state.
“This letter serves as an official notice of the unconstitutional activity and demands that the school district remove the monument immediately or at a minimum, remove the religious references from the monument,” the American Humanist Association’s legal center wrote in a letter sent Thursday.
The monument, a gift from a donor, was placed between the field house and the football field in August and has already become part of the team’s game day ritual.
The monument cites the Bible’s Romans 8:31: “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
It also quotes Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things. Strengthen me.”
But the statue has already made a positive impression. Players touch the statue as they enter the field before games.
“They think it gives them good luck,” Morris Stevens, who has two sons on the football team, told WXIA. “I say we live in a free nation and let’s exercise our freedoms and beliefs.”
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The Red Raiders’ football team is off to a 3-1 start.
“We have discussed the situation with our attorneys and are in the process of responding to the entities and forming a plan to deal with the situation,” school Superintendent Allen McCannon told Madison Journal Today.
jmolinet@nydailynews.com Follow on Twitter @jmolinet
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