We had a special discussion tonight around Justice and Immigration!
Following a format known as a “Ben Franklin Circle” we “broke bread” together (OK, pizza =), got in a circle and then discussed the virtue of “justice,” one of the 13 moral values that Ben Franklin had cherished and had himself discussed regularly back in the mid 1700’s with a group of his contemporaries who were interested in continued growth and personal development (much as we are in our on-going spiritual growth here at the LIGHT!).
We discussed what “social justice” meant to each of us and then delved into “racial justice” where many had either observed or had first-hand experiences (mostly negative) with implicit and even explicit racial bias right here in America.
From there we broke into groups of 3-5 people and applied what we had learned about “justice” to tackle some elements of “immigration” – namely the “should immigration policy incorporate business needs” and “should immigrants be required to assimilate some fluency in English.” The interesting thing about our discussion was that, even though we have a very diverse group of people politically we were able to agree on outcomes for each of those topics and then begin working towards practical solutions. (We didn’t completely finish the solutions since we ran out of time.)
Overall it was a fascinating discussion and we were glad to see that God still moves in the heart of His people to help them care about justice!