Billboards promoting a celebration of faith and freedom at the First Baptist Church in Dallas were removed after complaints from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and the Dallas Morning News. The patriotic billboard campaign included the title of the sermon Dr. Robert Jeffress planned to deliver on June 24 – “America is a Christian Nation.”
“We were told by the billboard company that the message was divisive,” Jeffress told the Todd Starnes Radio Show.
The sermon title was inspired by a comments made by Supreme Court Justices John Jay and David Josiah Brewer – both of whom described America as a Christian nation. However, the Dallas Morning News and Mayor Rawlings blasted the pastor’s sermon title suggesting it was hateful and divisive.
“That is not the Christ I follow,” the mayor told the newspaper. “It’s not the Dallas I want to be – to say things that do not unite us but divide us. I never heard those words – that voice come out of Christ. Just the opposite. I was brought up to believe: Be proud of yours, but do not diminish mine.”
