Sermon on the Mound

The Sermon on the Mound is the name given by the Scottish press to an address made by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 21 May 1988. She had been invited by the previous year's Moderator of the General Assembly, Duncan Shaw, and was the first Prime Minister ever to address the body directly. Her address has been seen as her response to religious criticism of her policies such as that contained in the 1985 Faith in the City report.
The name "Sermon on the Mound" is a play on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and on the artificial hill in Edinburgh called the Mound, on which the Church's Assembly Hall stands. It also reflects the sermon-like tone of her address, which is normally discouraged in debates in the assembly; she had preached as a Methodist in her Oxford years. And it has been seen in the context of the fact that Thatcher was preaching to a church and nation that consistently rejected her ideology. 
Themes.
In the address, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy. 
Individualism.
One key idea in Margaret Thatcher's political thinking was individualism, famously summed up in her 1987 statement that "There is no such thing as society." This aligns with the theme of individual personal salvation in the Evangelical Methodist tradition in which she was raised. A main theme of the speech is therefore the individual, both in the context of spirituality and of social responsibility. Citing a view that "Christianity is about spiritual redemption, not social reform", she asserted that, while it would be wrong to see these as polar opposites, Christians should emphasise personal responsibility. Quoting from the hymn "I Vow to Thee, My Country" (which was not in the Church of Scotland's hymnary of the time), she said "It goes on to speak of 'another country I heard of long ago' whose King can't be seen and whose armies can't be counted, but 'soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase'. Not group by group, or party by party, or even church by church—but soul by soul—and each one counts."
Choice.
Choice played a significant part in Thatcherite reforms and Thatcher claimed choice was also Christian by stating that Christ chose to lay down his life and that all individuals have the God-given right to choose between good and evil. Thus theological ideas of free-will and free-market ideas of consumer choice flowed together in her thinking.
Democracy.
The speech contains an ambivalence to democracy. It points out that "nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned" and, ideally, when Christians meet, the purpose should not be 'to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit - something which may be quite different." Nevertheless, she professes to be an enthusiast for democracy, because more than any other system it safeguards the value of the individual and restrains the abuse of power: "and that "is" a Christian concept." Thus democracy is linked in her thinking to individualism.
Wealth production.
A central pillar of Thacherite economics was the freedom of private enterprise to create wealth. In the speech to the assembly, she linked this too to Biblical commands: "We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. 'If a man will not work he shall not eat' wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation." However she did not mention the Good Samaritan; her remarks that the Samaritan could not have helped if he had not been rich, and that the parable teaches us first to create wealth and then help the poor, have sometimes been cited in the context of this speech, but in fact were made elsewhere. It has been suggested that by 1988 the Samaritan interpretation had become "an albatross" which she avoided repeating.
Reception.
The speech was highly controversial. One clergyman present described it as 'a disgraceful travesty of the gospel'. When she finished speaking, the Moderator, James Whyte, formally presented her with church reports on housing and poverty, which was interpreted in the press as a polite rebuke. One journalist recalls: "It's said that this speech marked the beginning of the end for Conservative rule in Scotland, with many voices raised in opposition to what they regarded as an alien creed that abused classic Christian ideas in an effort to fashion a political manifesto." 
However, Thatcher's supporters took the view that if the Church invited her to speak, it should have expected her to speak of religious aspects of her worldview. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation, which reproduces the full text of the speech on its website and characterises the nickname "Sermon on the Mound" as distasteful, rates it as having key importance as a statement of Thatcher's views on: "civil liberties, education, taxation, family, race, immigration, nationality, religion & morality, social security, and welfare."