WYOMING, MI — Despite receiving a strongly-worded letter from an out-of-state attorney, Wyoming city officials are in no hurry to erase the city logo from municipal vehicles or city business cards just because it features a small outline of a church.

“We’ve got bigger fish to fry than this,” said Wyoming City Manager Curtis Holt. “It’s not a front-burner issue for me. We’ve not had one citizen complaint about our logo.”

On Friday, Wyoming officials received a faxed letter from attorneys representing the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a Madison, Wis.-based atheist and agnostic group that promotes a strict separation between church and state.

The group has taken issue with Wyoming’s logo, adopted around 1959 when the city incorporated, which features the silhouette of a church adorned with a cross in the lower right quadrant. The other quadrants contain a house, a factory and a golf course.

The FFRF contends the addition of the church on a city insignia violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which mandates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

The letter does not explicitly threaten a lawsuit, but does cite numerous federal court cases where a municipality was taken to court over inclusion of religious symbology of some kind on an official seal or logo. In the letter, FFRF staff attorney Patrick Elliott urges the city to “immediately discontinue using this seal and adopt a new representation of the city that is inclusive of all of your citizens.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the FFRF, said the city would be foolish to fight them in court over changing the seal because legal precedent is on their side.

"This kind of thing has been successfully litigated before. This is too egregious to ignore."

The group claims to have been contacted by “a concerned citizen who has necessary business in Wyoming.” The group says they have more than 18,500 members around the country and nearly 500 in Michigan. Gaylor declined to name the person who made the complaint.

"We don't go roaming around the country looking for violations. They come to us."

The group recently lost a case in southeast Michigan when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit the FFRF brought against the city of Warren, which blocked an anti-religious winter solstice display at city hall during Christmas. The group had also tried to stop the city from displaying a nativity scene.

"Fundamentally, we are a secular country with a godless government," said Gaylor. "The only references to religion (in the Constitution) are exclusionary."

Holt said he's never heard of a complaint about the Wyoming seal before, and beyond the letter, has heard nothing from the FFRF as of Tuesday afternoon.

“It seems like if they were truly interested in a solution to their concerns, they’d talk to us,” he said.

He said the city attorney, Jack Sluiter, is reviewing the letter. Wyoming Mayor Jack Poll responded to the letter last week, indicating the city would likely not change the logo unless advised to do so by legal counsel.

Gaylor said a legal case "would be a losing battle for Wyoming," and the city should "consider the pocketbook issue" before fighting the foundation in court.

The FFRF's other co-president, Dan Barker, was in Grand Rapids last fall for an appearance at a Center For Inquiry Michigan meeting after that group erected a controversial billboard along U.S. 131 that declared "You don't need God — to hope, to care, to love, to live."

The FFRF claims the number of non-religious citizens, or "Nones" has climbed to 19 percent, or nearly one in five Americans, based on a new study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press.