It began, as these things do, with a pun. First Baptist out on 64 put up a marquee that read "WALMART ISN'T THE ONLY SAVING PLACE," and felt, I am told, quite pleased with itself.

The Methodists a mile down the road did not take this lying down. Within the week their own sign read "GOD DOESN'T DO BLACK FRIDAY — HIS GIFT WAS ALREADY FREE." The Presbyterians, who pride themselves on restraint, held out for nine days before posting something about predestination that nobody fully understood but everyone agreed was a strong entry.

By August it was open theological warfare conducted entirely in changeable plastic letters at forty-five miles an hour. Traffic on 64 slowed to a crawl on Sunday afternoons, not from congestion but from reading. I have attended seminaries that generated less genuine engagement with scripture than that stretch of county road did in a single humid summer.

The war ended, as wars do, from exhaustion and a letter shortage. First Baptist ran out of the letter E. But for one summer, the gospel was the most interesting thing on the highway, and every soul who drove it got a little sermon they didn't ask for and mostly didn't mind.