For the family of the late Trayvon Martin, Saturday’s ruling – that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of any wrongdoing in his shooting of Trayvon – is a terrible tragedy, and a miscarrying of justice, compounding an already vast sea of grief.

In this post, Brethren minister Brian R. Gumm reflects on the political & eschatological vision of kingdom come in the movie version of Les Misérables, and suggests that violent revolution should not be conflated with righteousness and work for Christ’s peaceable kingdom.

A recent article in the New York Times provides a fascinating account of the profound impact that Christian forgiveness played in a Florida murder case. This forgiveness set in motion an amazing chain of events that culminated in the murderer receiving a greatly reduced sentence of 20 years in prison. How did this happen? The answer lies both in the victim’s family’s practice of forgiveness, and also the practice of restorative justice that was employed during the sentencing process.

It’s moments such as these that are only possible on the web… After hearing some amount of Facebook-based moral outrage from friends both progressive and conservative, centered somehow around the fast food chain, Chick-fil-A, I decided I better pull my head out of the sand and see what the kerfuffle was all about. The first story I read was an LA Times editorial on Chick-fil-A and free speech. I’ll return to the content of that story in a moment, but as I reached the bottom of the page, my eyes uncharacteristically caught sight of the advertisement. It’s offer? Free Chick-fil-A!