April 07 +James Gambling

There is nothing new about gambling.   We know it was going on more than three thousand years ago, and ivory, porcelain and stone dice have been found in the ruins of Pompeii.  But it has recently forced itself to the front of our public consciousness.

First came the Lottery, followed by on-line gambling (which attracts up to six million punters in the U.K. if some statistics are to be believed). Then there was ‘Casino Royale’, the new Bond film with its scenes of glamorous sophistication and wealth beyond most people’s dreams. On a more mundane level, Bingo is making a come-back. Finally, there was the dramatic announcement that a new super-casino would be in Manchester rather than Blackpool or the Dome. Locations for a further 16 smaller casinos will be revealed in due course.

‘So what?’ some would argue. ‘Doesn’t all this offer legitimate enjoyment and social contact which helps to build up the fabric of society?’ It could be said to use up emotional energy in a (mostly) non-aggressive way, and of course it is a major source of employment as well as providing much needed revenue for the government. Most gambling is fairly trivial, and anyway there’s not much about it in the Bible. Even John Wesley once said “I never bought a lottery ticket myself, but I blame not those who do.”

Against this, many Christians would suggest that gambling amounts to a denial of faith because it appeals to ‘blind chance’ rather than the providence of God in an ordered universe. Nor are the sums involved exactly insignificant. More is spent on gambling in this country than on alcohol, tobacco, clothing or footwear – and we spend more than half as much on our ‘little flutters’ as we do on household food. It has to be asked whether this is really good stewardship of God-given resources.

Gambling can also damage your personality, just as smoking can damage your health. It involves an escape from reality into fantasy, and can quickly cause people to become engrossed, obsessive and unscrupulous. William Blake talked of “the winner’s shout and loser’s curse”, and the Methodist Church deplored a culture of “triumphant greed and envious loss”. Gambling encourages acquisitiveness and easily leads to excess and a false sense of values which can destroy families as well as individual lives.

In fact, the whole issue of addiction is central to this debate. As the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked recently, “It is quite clear... that gambling is a more and more popular form of addiction in this country”. Hence the story-line about Alistair and his ‘habit’ in that every-day tale of country-folk, ‘The Archers’ on Radio 4. All addictions are a form of bondage or imprisonment of the soul, and as gambling becomes increasingly normalised and advertised in the U.K. so we increase the vulnerability of those most likely to become addicts. Apparently, each of the 16 new ‘smaller’ casinos will want to attract about 5,000 brand new gamblers in order to maximise profits; and the success of the whole industry ultimately depends on the customer going away empty-handed.

We can’t just ban everything to which some people may become addicted. That would mean saying goodbye to work as well as to alcohol and chocolate! But since gambling represents a substitute for real living, the challenge to the Christian Church is to offer an attrractive alternative. Jesus called that ‘life in all its fullness’ – which is far more exciting and infinitely more reliable than even the headiest game of on-line poker.

+James Newcome, Bishop of Penrith