From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Casino Ethics
What do religious traditions say about gambling?
To those who admire him, William Bennett often seems a kind of professional saint whose job it is to pronounce wisely on the moral condition of America. But given his just-revealed affinity for high-stakes gambling--Newsweek claims that his losses come to about $8 million--is he also a professional sinner? It depends on who is doing the judging.
Mr. Bennett doesn't think so. At first he was unapologetic about his gambling; now he has forsworn it. But even in his final statement on the flap he would admit only to setting a bad "example" by doing "too much gambling." Most of America's religious traditions--and the lessons of its political history--would ask for a bit more contrition than that.
In the early 19th century, states, colleges and even Christian organizations did often sanction fund-raising lotteries; and the South used a lottery to help fund Civil War reparations. But corruption always stayed close at hand, and a scandal in the Louisiana state lottery in the 1890s led to 36 states outlawing gambling in their very constitutions, a check that held firm for a half-century or so.
Religious traditions, which provide much fodder for Mr. Bennett's moral fables and lessons, add more clues that he could have followed to guard his own conduct. The Bible doesn't provide a specific admonition against gambling. But it does contain many warnings against slothfulness, covetousness, poor stewardship, temptation and greed. "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires," Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:9. "So all Judeo-Christian traditions have looked less than favorably on gambling," says Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, in Nashville.
Mr. Bennett's Catholic upbringing, not surprisingly, included frequent family visits to parish bingo nights. And some Catholic theologians are willing to give him harbor within abusus non tollit usus: Just because something can be abused doesn't mean its use is forbidden.
"Under this doctrine, Catholics tend not to be absolutist on gambling, drinking or even war," says Terrence Tilley, chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of Dayton, a Catholic school. "It's one of those fundamental principles that kind of stands everywhere behind Catholic moral theology." So gambling per se isn't wrong, Prof. Tilley argues; addictive gambling is a sickness, not a moral weakness; and gambling becomes sinful only when the practitioner does so in the knowledge that he might hurt himself or others.
Here's where conservative Protestants part ways with Catholics. They believe that gambling is an evil in itself. They also see it as the cause of a great deal of personal and social pain, especially among the growing number of gambling addicts. One-fifth of them will attempt suicide, a greater share than for any other addictive disorder, says Ron Reno, who analyzes gambling for Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry. And gambling, concluded a report by SMR Research Corp. a few years ago, "may be the single fastest-growing driver of bankruptcy."
The problem is that other social concerns, such as abortion, burn more brightly for evangelicals. "Our plate is full, so this is just one more issue," says Rex Rogers, president of Cornerstone University, in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The corrosiveness of legalized gambling also tends to get papered over by the spread of the $66 billion industry to every corner of the nation, with lotteries now helping balance budgets in nearly every state and casinos turning out bleary-eyed customers in 27. The resulting gravy train of tax revenues and campaign contributions has silenced all but the most principled politicians. And with many in their flocks taking a Sunday-afternoon drive to the slots after exiting the pews, even few evangelical preachers inveigh against gambling anymore.
As for liberal denominations, Methodists and Presbyterians regularly attack state lotteries as predatory on the poor. "Mainline Protestants tend to make a modern argument against an ancient vice, whereas evangelicals tend to make an ancient argument against an ancient vice," says John Green, an expert on the politics of religion at the University of Akron.
The unusual alliance of evangelicals and their liberal brethren on this issue occasionally registers victories against the rising tide, such as getting 35,000 video-poker machines yanked from stores in South Carolina.
Most Americans probably can't cite any theology of gambling. Yet they share a gut feeling that Mr. Bennett's excesses in the casinos were simply wrong. Score that as a victory for everyday morality.
