God or Mammon?

The picture is a section of a Victorian painting by the artist G. F. Watts. Like many artists in this period, he was appalled by the greed and acquisitiveness which had taken hold of society, and even more by the social consequences of the love of money - or the worship of the idol of Mammon. The painting depicts children trampled beneath the feet of this monstrous figure - a protest against child labour within a system in which the pursuit of profit had become the supreme concern of many powerful people.

I have posted here previously information about a project on which I have been working for a number of years. It is a manuscript with the provisional title God or Mammon? The Critical Question for World Christianity. I am very grateful for expressions of interest and support in this regard and I wanted to share the news that the work is at last nearing completion. It has become my all-consuming task and feels as though it represents the culmination and combination of all I have learned and discovered throughout my life. Unfortunately, it has, like Topsy, just grown and grown, so that it is now approaching 130,000 words. Whether I can find a publisher willing to consider this magnum opus remains to be seen, but either way this something I just had to do!

The work divides into two major sections: the first surveys the Bible on this subject, taking in Law and Prophets and tracing the roots of Mammon back into the ancient world, before moving to Jesus in the context of a Roman Empire which has so many parallels with our culture: imperial rule, the claims that the pax Romana constituted the end of history, and the impact on occupied lands and peoples, including of course, the Galilee of Jesus. I focus largely on Luke's work in his two volumes addressed to 'the most excellent Theophilus', before exploring Paul with special reference to the project of 'The collection'. I think the significance of this has been much overlooked and I see it as in continuity with the depiction of the community which had 'all things in common' in the Book of Acts.

The second section is a survey of 'historical struggles' to remain faithful to the praxis identified in the first part. There are surprises here: I discovered a previously unknown tradition (for me!) of ancient Syrian monasticism which has much to teach us, and, even more remarkable, was the discovery of pre-Reformation preaching in the medieval period which transformed my understanding both of that period, and of the context of the birth of Protestantism. I have attempted to track the growth of Mammonism through later history, bringing the story up to date in our globalised world in which the challenge posed to faith by a 'culture of economism' is greater than ever before. I'm working on the final section at present where the really crucial conclusions have to be drawn. I will be enormously grateful for the prayers of any who are interested and sympathetic to this project.