They are located at several intersections, displays that began as a beautification project and has taken a detour to a completely different intersection.
"Separation of church and state," said McAlester city manager Peter Stasiak, explaining why the city removed religiously themed scenes from city street signs after a complaint was received.
"As a city we can't endorse or establish a religion, and that's where you kind of get into a problem here, everybody's free to practice their own religion, but with the city we are not," he said.
And yet, right outside the city council chambers, in big bold letters, 'In God we trust.' How does that fly?
"Uh, what I've been informed by the city attorney is God is universal to all religions, that's kind of the distinction," he said.
Some of the signs have since been relocated to St. John's Catholic Church, and some people would like to see them put back where they were.
"Everybody's trying to take down the Christian symbols which is wrong," said resident Clarice Scheck.
"We looked at a Google search and there's about 22 different forms of religion that have different symbols, so if you've got the sign of the cross do you need to have 22 other symbols along with it?" asked Stasiak.
"If someone wants to put up some other kind of symbols that's great, but I don't believe we should be persecuted or criticized for what we believe," said Scheck.
