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New NH billboard: 'I'm an atheist and I vote'

Sep. 20—Jack Shields isn't a bit apprehensive about having his smiling face splashed across a billboard over Manchester's busy Elm Street.

"I'm an atheist and I vote," proclaims the billboard, purchased by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national nonprofit organization famously promoted in a TV commercial by Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

The billboards, going up around the country, are part of a national voter awareness campaign to push back against what foundation members see as a dangerous encroachment of religion on government.

Shields, 72, is retired and volunteers for local community organizations, including the Penacook Historical Society. He used to work for the Community Action Program for Belknap and Merrimack counties, running its weatherization program, and spent four years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa.

He's also a dedicated atheist.

Years ago, Shields took exception to the placement of a Christmas creche in Concord's City Plaza, adjacent to the State House grounds.

He wrote letters to the editor. Then he got a permit and put up a "creche" of his own.

At the center of the display was the Bill of Rights, and the three wise men depicted were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. He got some pushback, he said, but his display has since become an annual tradition, co-existing with the Christmas creche and a menorah during the holidays.

Shield's activism put him on the radar of the foundation, and vice versa.

When the organization decided to launch a national campaign ahead of this year's elections, Shields agreed to have his photo on New Hampshire's billboard.

"Most people are shy about expressing the fact that they are atheists," he said. "I'm one of those people who are not."

The atheist group also had full-page ads in 45 newspapers around the country, including the New Hampshire Sunday News, urging people to "vote your secular values."

Charles Townsend, a former state lawmaker, appears in this Sunday's ad under the words: "I'm secular and I vote." Noting that "nones" (those unaffiliated with religion) now account for 29% of the U.S. population, the ad calls for keeping religion out of government, social policy, public schools, health care decisions and personal lives.

Shields said he's deeply concerned about what he sees as the growing influence of "Christian nationalists."

"For a very long time, we had an absolute wall between church and state, and that wall is coming down," he said.

There's a national movement to have the motto "In God We Trust" — already on U.S. currency — displayed in public schools in America, Shields said. "If we go around saying, 'In God we trust,' and we don't think about the 30% of people who don't believe that way, then some part of our population's not being served," he said.

"Atheists and agnostics are often ridiculed," Shields said. "A lot of people say we don't believe in anything, which is really not the case at all."

What does he believe in?

"The rights of man," he said. "I believe in science."

But he doesn't believe in "God-given rights," he said. "In our country, it's a right given by the Constitution, which is a right given by men to other men," he said.

Shields grew up in the Roman Catholic faith; he was an altar boy for eight years. At 17, he read the Bible in its entirety.

"It was filled with mayhem and death and destruction," he said. "I couldn't believe that God believed in these things. I said this can't be right."

That was the beginning of questioning his own beliefs. "For me, it keeps on building until finally, I'm on the outside looking in," he said.

Shields said he hopes the foundation's billboard will encourage others to vote and to speak up. "I don't think I'm the only person who thinks this way," he said.

"I guess I want to set an example," he said. "We don't have to be afraid."

swickham@unionleader.com