This Independence Day weekend in Asheville, there’s a seven-word debate brewing about religion’s role in government, and area commuters have a front row seat to the controversy.

That’s because it’s being played out on dueling Asheville billboards.

The Rev. Ralph Sexton, pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Asheville, and the We Still Pray movement funded four digital billboards that debuted Friday in Asheville — including one on Hendersonville Road — with the message “One nation, under God.”

This reference to the Pledge of Allegiance is a response in part to the billboard over Interstate 26 near Brevard Road reading, “One nation indivisible,” that purposely omits the words “under God” from the phrase.

The billboard, which appeared last month, is an Independence Day project of the N.C. Secular Association, a coalition of groups including the Western North Carolina Atheists.

The group paid $15,000 to put them up here, in Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Wilmington and Winston-Salem.

“This is so basic, so important, we felt like we couldn’t just look the other way…. It was important enough to stop and say that needs to be answered,” Sexton said.

We Still Pray is made up mostly of local churches, and it formed 10 years ago in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions prohibiting organized prayer in schools.

A statewide coalition of atheists and agnostics has placed six “One nation indivisible” billboards around North Carolina, including a controversial one in Charlotte on Billy Graham Parkway, named after the Montreat-based evangelist.