It is always dangerous to presume that we have an open channel to God and that God is on our side. In 1857, during the Indian rebellion against the British Raj more than a hundred sermons were preached from the pulpits of London after the nation observed a day of humiliation and prayer. Many of those sermons articulated British national identity in terms of God’s people waging war against God’s adversaries. Such sermons brought together Christian piety and messianic vocation,

Tom Wright in his book, Spiritual and Religions The Gospel in an Age of Paganism, in Chapter 11, makes three sequential statements that get's to the heart of current day issue regarding the love of money or worship of Mammon, which informs much of our social and political debate causing many problems in the process. First, he writes: "Mammon, like all idols, enslaves and dehumanizes not only those who worship him but also those who are caught in his net. Societies where Mammo