The Peacemaking We Already Know

Cedar Valley News
January 30, 2026
The Peacemaking We Already Know
By: Lars Olson
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox stood in the Washington National Cathedral last month, beside Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and asked Americans to lay down their swords.

A Republican and a Democrat. A Latter-day Saint and a Jew. Two men who disagree on plenty—standing together to remind us that disagreement does not have to mean destruction.

Governor Cox has spent years building what he calls the “Disagree Better” movement. The idea is simple: we can hold firm to our convictions and still treat the person across the table as a human being. We can argue without hating. We can lose an argument and keep a neighbor.

This is not a new idea. It is as old as faith itself.

Cox draws on his faith to ground this work. “There is a peacemaking ethos in every religion,” he has said. He is right. The scriptures of every tradition call us to something higher than winning. They call us to love—even when love is inconvenient, even when the person we are called to love votes differently, worships differently, sees the world through a lens we do not share.

In Cedar Valley, we know this story. We lived it.

When the Khan family arrived—Pakistani Christians who had fled persecution in their homeland—not everyone was glad to see them. There were hard words and harder silences. But there were also people who chose differently. People who brought a casserole instead of a complaint. People who showed up at the deli not to make a point, but to make a friend.

We did not agree on everything. We still do not. George Khan and I have had conversations on that front porch that went deep into the night—conversations where neither of us changed the other’s mind. But we changed something else. We became brothers. Not despite our differences. Through them.

That is the secret Governor Cox is trying to share with the country. You do not have to agree to belong to each other. You do not have to surrender your convictions to extend your hand.

The research backs him up. Face-to-face contact with people who are different from us changes us—not by making us abandon what we believe, but by making it harder to hate. Service does the same thing. When you are building something together, stacking sandbags or serving meals or raising a barn, the labels fall away. What remains is the work. What remains is the neighbor.

This week, we have written about skilled trades and the dignity of working hands. We have written about analog childhoods and the gift of boredom. Now I want to close the week with this: the peacemaking we need is not something we have to invent. It is something we have to remember.

Every faith teaches it. Every front porch can practice it. Every family dinner can become a place where we disagree without destroying.

Governor Cox asked the question we all need to ask: “Is this what 250 years has wrought on us?” America turns 250 this July. The answer to that question depends on what we do next—not in Washington, but in our own towns, our own churches, our own kitchens.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Not the peacekeepers—the ones who avoid conflict at any cost. The peacemakers. The ones who walk into the hard conversation and come out the other side with something built instead of something broken.

That is the work. That is the calling. And it starts, as it always has, on the front porch.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

Want to know the full story behind Cedar Valley? Teresa, Caleb, Dan, and the community you have come to know in these editorials first came together in Quiet Echo: When Loud Voices Divide, Quiet Ones Bring Together. Discover how a small town found its way from fear to fellowship—one quiet act of courage at a time. Available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3ME4nSs

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