The billboard looks down on the Ormeau Road in Belfast, white lettering on a purple background. It reads "The Good Friday Agreement - It can work. It will work. Make it work" It is one of a number of posters put up in Northern Ireland in the week of the Hillsborough Declaration, when the whole peace process seemed to be in danger. The Women's Coalition (wouldn't you know?) discovered that there was some money left over from the "Vote Yes" campaign in last May's referendum and that it might be possible to use this to rally public confidence in the future of the agreement. Together with the Progressive Unionist and Alliance parties, they devised the slogan and got to work.
There have been other attempts by business leaders, trade unions and community groups to galvanise public opinion in the North in a way which could encourage politicians to move forward. But the situation is, if anything, more difficult than it was a year ago. The people of Northern Ireland voted on the agreement twice last year, once in the referendum, a second time in a poll for the assembly. Now they see the politicians - including two prime ministers - come and go, and think it is up to them to finish the job they were elected to do. The political consensus now is that it may be necessary to "park" the talks until after the summer. Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair are expected to fly to Belfast next week for discussions, this time with all the pro-agreement parties, in another attempt to find a compromise that would allow the executive to be set up. But nobody is betting serious money on an early resolution.
There is an almost general view that both David Trimble and Gerry Adams are genuinely committed to overcoming the political obstacles, but are trapped by the strong emotions of their own supporters on the decommissioning issue. If that is the case, the argument goes, it may be no bad thing to get the summer out of the way and allow talks to resume in a calmer and more constructive atmosphere in the autumn. That view represents a failure of politics and a betrayal of those who voted, often with considerable reservations, for the agreement a year ago.
It also ignores the dangers that the summer could bring. We are moving into a very volatile period, politically and in terms of the mood on the ground. If Mo Mowlam is unable to trigger D'Hondt and set up the executive, Ian Paisley and other anti-agreement parties will seize the opportunity offered by the European elections in June to mount a rerun of last year's referendum on the agreement. That danger would be greatly reduced if an executive were in place and the DUP had taken up its two seats on it. The marching season looms, and with it the fear that Drumcree could prove even more difficult this year.
The mood has hardened following recent events such as the murder of Rosemary Nelson and heightened sectarian tensions in Portadown. Yet we know that there is an overwhelming majority in both parts of this island which, despite the arguments over decommissioning, still wants the agreement to work. What is badly needed now is a strategy for mobilising this silent majority, giving it a chance to express its views in a way which might reassure the politicians that it is safe to move. It is hard to see how this can be done. Public meetings and political appeals relating to the Northern Ireland situation are almost inevitably seen as partisan. Any campaign needs to recognise that the politicians face genuine difficulties at the moment and to frame its appeal for movement in away that is non-threatening.
There is another possibility. Earlier this week Denis Bradley, the former priest from Derry who acted for many years as an intermediary between the IRA and the British government, wrote a passionately argued article in this newspaper urging the churches to become involved. Such an initiative would be quite different from the Day of Reconciliation proposed in the Hillsborough Declaration. Public reaction to that suggestion has already shown that we are still a very long way from being able to embrace the healing process. We need a secure peace and the building of mutual trust before that can happen.
What Mr Bradley, writing as a nationalist, suggests is that Archbishop Sean Brady should lead a number of days of prayer in Armagh for peace and political progress in Northern Ireland. Depending on the response of the congregation this might also allow Archbishop Brady to make a more direct plea for movement and generosity from his own people. Clearly, it would be more powerful if this could be a common enterprise led by Protestant and Catholic church leaders, appealing to their own congregations for a better understanding of the problems facing the other side.
At the very least, this would give public recognition to the widespread concern that now exists about the health of the peace process, and allow hundreds of thousand of people who voted for the Belfast Agreement to demonstrate their continuing support for it. One does not have to believe in the power of prayer (although, as Mr Bradley says prayer "might also encourage God to surprise us") to see that such an occasion, open to people of all religions or none, could provide an opportunity for both communities to express their hopes for the potential promise of the Good Friday agreement in a setting which would not be overtly political.
The churches have often been criticised - by myself among others - for being over-concerned about the sensitivities of their own congregations, and thus failing to give the leadership that might have helped the process of achieving peace and reconciliation in Ireland. There have been notable exceptions to this, when an act of moral courage has helped to steady a whole community. One has only to think of Gordon Wilson's appeal for forgiveness after the death of his daughter, Marie, in the Enniskillen bombing, or the Rev William Bingham, chaplain to the Orange Order, and his sermon to his own people in the wake of the murder of the three small Quinn boys last summer.
The churches are in a unique position to encourage people to make an act of public witness at a particularly critical time in the peace process. It also provides an opportunity for them to give the kind of moral leadership that has often been missing in the past. Let us hope that they rise to the challenge.