Social Justice is an important part of our church and our history. We participate in many events throughout the year where you can be of service.

One of the great ways to start is to attend the Social Justice Committee meeting. Also, you can check our calendar for any upcoming opportunities.

The Social Justice Committee (SJC) consists of at least five members elected at a congregational meeting. Members serve two-year terms and may be re-elected. Other persons may serve on the committee as non-voting members. The SJC keeps informed of events and issues of concern to religious liberals and encourages the study of such issues by church members. It informs the membership of needs and opportunities for social action and makes recommendations of ways and means to achieve effective action. The SJC sponsors the Saturday Afternoon Forum and the Social Justice Book Club. The committee's priority areas are economic justice, racial justice, and voting rights. The committee decides how to take action in these and other areas and how funds should be disbursed. Committee members also decide on speakers to invite to upcoming Saturday Afternoon Forum programs. Please contact the church office if you would like to attend the monthly Zoom meeting.

"When we are baffled by the insanity of the “other side”—in our politics, at work, or at home—it’s because we aren’t seeing how the conflict itself has taken over.

That’s what “high conflict” does. It’s the invisible hand of our time. It's what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority and, at the same time, more and more mystified by the other side.

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.

Our journey begins in California, where a world-renowned conflict expert struggles to extract himself from a political feud. Then we meet a Chicago gang leader who dedicates his life to a vendetta—only to find himself working beside the man who killed his childhood idol. Next, we travel to Colombia, to find out whether thousands of people can be nudged out of high conflict at scale. Finally, we return to America to see what happens when a group of liberal Manhattan Jews and conservative Michigan corrections officers choose to stay in each other’s homes in order to understand one another better.

All these people, in dramatically different situations, were drawn into high conflict by similar forces, including conflict entrepreneurs, humiliation, and false binaries. But ultimately, all of them found ways to transform high conflict into something good, something that made them better people. They rehumanized and recatego­rized their opponents, and they revived curiosity and wonder, even as they continued to fight for what they knew was right.

People do escape high conflict. Individuals—even entire communities—can short-circuit the feedback loops of outrage and blame, if they want to. This is a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world."

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