November 2

…O I had thought the moral plants would grow,
From all the care my talents can bestow,
Like trees of virtue lift their blooming heads
Where snowy clouds suspend their liquid beds!
Ye lads, whom I have taught with sacred zeal,
For your hard fate I pangs of sorrow feel.
O who shall now your rising talents guide,
Where virtues reign and sacred truths preside?

…Eternal Goodness, from thy shining seat,
Let mercy fly to guide my wandering feet.
On distant lands I will thy servant be,
To turn from vice the youthful mind to thee.
Just two revolving moons shall light the shores
When Carolina's laws shall shut the doors
Of this fine room, where science holds his reign,
The humble tutor, hated Daniel Payne.

“If dominating and destructive relations to the earth are interrelated with gender, class, and racial domination, then a healed relation to the earth cannot come about simply through technological 'fixes'. It demands a social reordering to bring about just and loving interrelationship between men and women, between races and nations, between groups presently stratified into social classes, manifest in great disparities of access to the means of life. In short, it demands that we must speak of eco-justice, and not simply of domination of the earth as though that happened unrelated to social domination.”

“Established religion sees religious faith as the sacred ideology of the dominant social order. Religion is the 'handmaiden' of the ruling class. It defines this established social order as one that has been created by God and is the reflection of the divine will. Its words for God reflect the titles of the rulers. God and the rulers are called by the same names and are imaged as looking alike. The rulers thus appear to be like God, to have a special closeness to God and to represent God on earth. …Prophetic faith, by contrast, sets God in tension with the ruling class by having God speak, through the prophet, as advocate of the poor and the oppressed.