Need a Yard Sign? Look North

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Nicole Muhlenkamp speaking about the religious freedom yard sign project at Dayton’s October Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally.

The Fortnight for Freedom came and went, and despite more than 33 lawsuits being filed against the government by Catholic parishes and organizations, non-Catholic universities, and others, religious liberty has not been a campaign issue.

But Russia, OH, resident Nicole Muhlenkamp knew it wasn’t going away. “I was talking with a couple of friends at a bonfire at the end of September,” she says. “and we all said we were surprised at how nobody was talking about religious freedom anymore.”

One of the people knew members of a Toledo group called Faith for Freedom, which had distributed more than 10,000 yard signs about the issue to members of Catholic and Protestant churches. They decided to do the same, and a little research showed that it would be easier and cheaper to print their own than to buy signs from the Toledo group.

The young people quickly found donors willing to pay for 2,000 signs. “They were gone within a week,” Muhlenkamp says. But a second printing hasn’t gone as quickly.

A thousand of the signs were snapped up, but another thousand remain. Muhlenkamp and her group, Protect Religious Freedom Southwest Ohio, set up a Facebook page and have distributed many of the signs to bookstores, shops, and the Dayton-based, pro-life group One More Soul (see below for a complete list of locations). They’re certain that people in Cincinnati would be interested, but their contacts are all in the north.

“It’s not too late for people in Cincinnati to get involved, especially for this weekend,” she says. “It’s easy to not see this issue urgently, but we need to do everything we can while we’re still free to do it.”

The group urges everyone to pray at home and to organize prayer hours for religious freedom in their parishes, and led a pilgrimage to the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics this weekend. Emails and phone calls about the signs have convinced her that many people do care about the issue, and that they want to do something — they just don’t know what to do.

“Once the urgency set in for me, I knew I had to do something,” she says. Putting a sign in your yard may seem small, but it’s a public witness to both our faith and our country’s Constitution.

Get a yard sign at:

Silver Cross Book Store, Ft. Loramie

E.A.T. Food For Life, Yorkshire

Homan Interiors, New Breman

One More Soul, Dayton

Veritas Catholic Bookstore, Dayton

St. Mark’s Bookstore, Centerville

To arrange a different pickup location or for large quantities, email the group at protectreligiousfreedom@gmail.com

 Photos courtesy Stand Up for Religious Freedom — Dayton.

For a video of Nicole Muhlenkamp speaking about the yard sign project at Dayton’s October Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, click here.