Millions of commuters from Monday onwards will be greeted by posters at a dozen stations with the words 'A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?'.
Earlier this year a similar campaign in London saw buses in the capital feature posters reading: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'
More than one in ten Americans are thought to have no particular faith, leading to the New York campaign's claim to be reaching out to one million of the city's inhabitants.
John Rafferty, a member of the Big Apple Coalition of Reason behind the subway posters and the president of the Secular Humanist Society of New York, admitted being inspired by the British Humanist Association campaign in the UK capital.
'The London campaign is where everybody got started, that rolled around. We considered doing it on busses here, but we didn't have the money,' he said.
Mr Rafferty added that he did not expect much controversy over the campaign in liberal New York.
'New York is quite unique in America. Will we get individual people who will complain? Yes,' he said.
'Will we get people scribbling on posters? Probably. But organised groups? I don't think so. In New York, I do not think we will get much of a backlash. What we hope is we will get people saying, 'I haven't been to church for 15 years, perhaps this is for me'.'
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