“The challenge … presents the possibility for hope and for worry with regard to the future of religion in American public life,” says Trey Dimsdale in this week’s Acton Commentary.

In 1919 the political landscape of Europe had been drastically rearranged, the United States had emerged from relative isolation onto the world scene, and the western world was in shock at the unprecedented scale of the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Amid the victory celebrations in the United States, a group of mothers in Prince George’s County, Maryland, organized munity effort to erect a memorial to nearly 50 county residents, their sons included, who had lost their lives fighting in Europe. The memorial pleted in the early 1920s and is today known as the Peace Cross in Bladensburg.

The full text of the essay can be found here.