Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission president Russell Moore is very disheartened to see that gambling has pervaded today's society—from television commercials to the state lottery, and even in advertisements for "daily fantasy sports" leagues.
The invitation to play games with money is never ceasing, he says. Even when he was young and living in his ancestral home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the threat of gambling has already begun since the casino industry "promised an economic turnaround if voters would just give them the right to exist."
Politicians who support gambling are not really evil, according to Moore. Even though some of them are personally corrupt, there are still others who have good intentions. "They want to educate children, build infrastructure, and so on without raising a tax burden. I think gambling is an illusory way to do this, but, still, I acknowledge good intentions at the root of some of the cheerleaders for the industry," he writes on his website.
Many also think that gambling is merely a "values" or "moral" issue, but Moore believes it is a "justice" issue. "Gambling is a justice issue that defines how it is that we love our neighbours and uphold the common good," he explains. "Gambling is a form of economic predation. Gambling grinds the faces of the poor into the ground. It benefits multinational corporations while oppressing the lower classes with illusory promises of wealth, and with (typically) low-wage, transitory jobs that simultaneously destroy every other economic engine of a local community."
He says people cannot address the problem of gambling if they ignore the larger issue of poverty. In the same vein, evangelicals who do not care about the poor should not go speaking in behalf of gambling issues.
