Parents of students in Texas are buying "Our God is Bigger" t-shirts after a school was forced to delete a Bible verse from its website following a complaint from an atheist group.
The Troup Independent School District removed the 1 Samuel 17:48 verse that says, "As Goliath moved closer to attack, David quickly ran out to meet him," from its website after it received a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) last January.
"It is well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion. No public school may urge religious viewpoints on students by granting special status to a religious text like the bible," FFRF staff attorney Sam Grover told school superintendent Stuart Bird.
FFRF said by quoting the Bible on its website, the school "unconstitutionally lends its power and prestige to Christianity" to exclude non-Christians.
As a result, a group of parents has organised and printed T-shirts that carry the message "Our God is Bigger" as their response to FFRF.
Brittany Taylor, who has two kids at the school, has joined other parents in the project.
"We support our school fully; they kind of had their hands tied in the situation. We wanted to fight back for them," she told KYTX.
Student Jesse Calley, a 7th grader, said, "I'm hoping that we get to put it back up because everybody should have freedom of religion."
The parents are planning to send photos of the kids wearing the t-shirts to FFRF.
"It will be in our children's hearts and they will not stop praising God because a group told them to," said Taylor.
She said nobody expected that the issue would become big "and everyone is excited and this town is uniting."
"We have gotten a lot of support from other towns and people on Facebook letting us know that they're proud to see us standing up for what we believe in and our kids standing up for what they believe in," she added.
