In late August, the Freedom From Religion Foundation brought its 2-year-old billboard campaign against “mixing God and government” to Trenton.

Perhaps on your drives around town, you’ve noticed the 19 billboards the organization placed in highly trafficked areas bearing such legends as “Imagine no religion,” “In reason we trust,” and “Praise Darwin: Evolve beyond belief.”

The signs are slated to come down at the end of the month but before they do, it seemed like a good idea to reflect on this nettlesome display of free speech.

The foundation has been running this billboard promotion of a government free of “religious overlap” as the Trenton Times described it, around the country since 2007. The billboards have been placed in half of the states in the nation.

The article noted that New Jersey’s first pro-separation billboard appeared in early August in Monmouth County, another landscape well populated with noteworthy religious architecture – some of it dating back 300 years.

Organizers of the effort have publicly stated that the Trenton area was subjected to a “mini-blitz” designed to beef up visibility. They told news venues they had to blitz Trenton because religious promotions and symbolism proliferate there.

“Religious billboards are everywhere and church steeples are everywhere and if people aren’t given an alternative, how are (they) going to get educated?” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of FFRF told the Times.

Indeed, the route I take through Trenton to the Diocesan Pastoral Center five mornings a week gives credence to the first part of her statement. But to me, the steeples and billboards are the saving graces of the trip each day.

The pale green spires of St. Stanislaus (Divine Mercy Parish) catch the eye first every morning, a reassuring welcome amid the hardscrabble cityscape.

Soon revealed are the steeples of St. Mary Byzantine, followed by Holy Cross (Divine Mercy parish). The sturdy and comforting façade of the now closed Sts. Peter and Paul Church endures toward the back of the architectural carbuncle that is the Trenton State Prison.

Continuing down Rt. 129 to the intersection at Hamilton Avenue and just visible to the right, is the cross on the roof of St. Joachim Church (Our Lady of the Angles Parish). To the left, Sacred Heart Church, the oldest parish in New Jersey, can be seen.

Now on Rt. 1 North, at Olden Avenue, St. Joseph Church, Trenton is on the right and St. Hedwig Church is on the left.

Stately and serene, these churches are spiritual beacons to motorists scrambling off the interstates and major highways to their places of employment every weekday morning.

That you can see them again on the way out comes as a blessing in times of particular stress, such as when traffic backs up and snares the whole dusty corridor in its thrall.

Like beads on a rosary, they invite drivers to calm down, relax and refocus on the sacred.

Another marker that offers a comforting moment for Catholics is the large new billboard on the way into Trenton advertising the benefits of sending one’s children to St. Raphael School in Hamilton. Its positive message is one more ray of light for motorists seeking safe harbor.

That the steeples and the billboard are obviously part of what touched a nerve with the Freedom foundation when it decided to pepper the area with irreligious messages is a sad commentary on our times and it calls for response.

Those who believe in God should be just as active in promoting that belief. We may not all be able to put up billboards but in these days of mass communication, it shouldn’t be hard to find ways to get the point across so I’ll be spending some time this weekend shopping for appropriately Christian bumper stickers.