Is Gambling a Problem or a Panacea?

When was the last time you gambled? Did you buy a lottery ticket that last time the Big Game reached into the multiple millions? Or did you stop by a casino in Las Vegas to play Blackjack and catch a show? Or maybe you love to bet the horses, or the dogs.

In a moment of full disclosure, I lost about $6 playing the slot machines in the on-board casino on a Caribbean cruise this summer, and I won about $100 at Churchill Down several years about picking the long shot winner of the Derby with a $4 bet.

Are we all part of a fine American tradition or are we committing grievous sin that will bring ruin to the Republic?

Gambling is a popular American tradition that provides enormous entertainment and helps government raise money, while enabling frequent personal financial ruin, spiritual bereft, and high crime. Surprisingly, the United States has had a long history of allowing some forms of legal gambling and a degree of tolerance of illegal gambling. And societal tolerance and acceptance of legal gambling can change rapidly. Scandals and gaming interests playing politics have led to backlashes which result in regulation and/or prohibition.

State governments have been involved in gambling for a very long time. In fact, gambling was a popular sport of the non-Puritan English who populated the colonies, and lotteries were used to bail out the early colonies. Although some financial backers of the colonies viewed gambling as a source of the colonies' problems, they began to see it as the solution as well. The Virginia Company of London, the financier of Jamestown in Virginia, was permitted by the Crown to hold lotteries to raise money for the company's colonial venture. The lotteries were relatively sophisticated and included instant winners.

All 13 original colonies established lotteries, usually more than one, to raise revenue. Playing the lottery became a civic responsibility. Proceeds helped establish some of the nation's earliest and most prestigious universities -- Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Princeton, and William and Mary. Lottery funds were also used to build churches and libraries. Ben Franklin, John Hancock, and George Washington were all prominent sponsors of specific lotteries for public works projects.

Gambling has experienced huge swings in popularity and legality during our history, and we are currently in the third major gambling wave. If you’re interested, read this brief history of gambling in the U.S.

The government involvement in gambling has also seen huge swings. Despite their colonial and early American popularity. from 1894 to 1964, there were no legal government-sponsored lotteries operating in the United States.

Growing opposition to tax increases was a leading factor in establishing state-run lotteries in the 20th century. In 1964 New Hampshire was the first state to sponsor a lottery, followed by New York in 1967. New Jersey launched the first financially successful modern lottery in 1971. Today, only Hawaii and Utah do not have state-run lotteries.

Today, there are more than 40 riverboat casinos in Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. Nearly 50 riverboat and dockside casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi. Approximately 298 Indian casinos and bingo halls were operating in 31 states - up from 70 in 16 states in 1988. 48 states have legalized some form of gambling - lotteries, casinos, riverboat casinos, Indian casinos, video lottery machines, pari-mutuel betting (horse racing, dog racing, jai-alai).

But despite my dalliances, disclosed above, I am opposed to the proliferation of gambling, and particularly the use of gambling as a method for public officials to raise funds. There are both spiritual and societal reasons for this opposition. Without developing a long treatise on the ills of gambling, here are a number of troubling facts gathered from many sources about gambling:

o The average compulsive gambler has debts exceeding $80,000 (Dallas Morning News, 1/4/84)

o Gambling exploits the poor, as "the poor bet a much larger share of their income." (National Bureau of Economic Research)

o Thirty to 50 percent of money collected by casinos annually comes from about 4 percent of the population.

o Legalized gambling increases illegal gambling by 300 percent. (Organized Crime Section of the Department of Justice)

o Getting killed by lightning is seven times more likely than winning a million dollars in a state lottery. (Harper's, July 1983)

o Only 40 cents of every lottery dollar goes to the state budget. Direct taxation costs only 1 cent on the dollar.

o Crime within 30 miles of Atlantic City rose by 107% in the nine years following the introduction of casinos to the area. (Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Aug. 1991)

o The rate of compulsive gambling among teens is growing at twice the rate of that of adults. (Dr. Howard J. Shaffer, Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Addiction Studies)

o Crime rates in casino communities are 84% higher than the national average. (U.S. News & World Report, 1/15/96

o Crime rates for counties with casinos are 8% higher than the crime rates of counties without casinos. (Las Vegas Sun, 6/17/99)

There’s also a reasonable case that gambling is what Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc. calls a “grievous sin.” The League is fight gambling interests in North Carolina.

Gambling is always sinful because it emanates from a spiritual motive God summarily rejects—covetousness, Creech argues.

He says: “Covetousness is an inordinate desire for money, property, or something that belongs to someone else. Rex Rogers in his book, Seducing America, rightly says there are only three ways to legitimately acquire property: (1) as a gift, (2) as a payment for labor, and (3) in fair exchange. Anything else is but a form of covetousness, and gambling certainly doesn't fit any of these criteria. Covetousness is the motive that drives the gambling enterprise.

It's a violation of the Tenth Commandment -- "Thou shalt not covet" (Ex. 20:17). Jesus strongly warned against this sin, saying: "Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" (Lk. 12:15).”

The first and second gambling waves ended in part because of a resurgence of public concern about morality and scandals in gaming. People can live with adverse odds but not cheating. Will the third wave of gambling end any time soon? Probably not, given the fact that it is largely victimless, politicians are for the most part gutless, and while covetousness is on God’s Top Ten List of sins, it doesn’t really seem to be a priority of the American church.

--James Jewell

I’m Not a Muslim. Are You Offended?

The headline in the San Jose Mercury read: Sermon Subject Raises Hackles, but what they meant was that a little church marquis—the kind with black moveable letters that promos the upcoming service—was upsetting the neighbors and getting the attention of a Mercury reporter. What was the offensive sermon title? Why I am not a Muslim, a sermon delivered on November 28 by Pastor Donald Fareed, president of a group called Persian Ministries International and a former Iranian Muslim who converted to Christianity after coming to America 14 years ago.



“I thought it was an offensive sign,” a neighbor said.



Huh? If a Christian church can’t preach (and promote) a sermon on why I’m not a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a secularist, or anything else, we’re all in trouble. Why Muslims are going to hell would be offensive, although true to the church’s doctrines. Would Why I am a Christian be deemed offensive to this very sensitive neighborhood.



In any case, Fareed preached his sermon. He says, "My goal is not to offend Muslims, but to communicate why I changed my religion--the spiritual reasons that led to my conversion.''



Fareed hosts a weekly television show in the Bay Area. About two years ago he vastly expanded his reach by broadcasting globally by satellite in Farsi. He believes he now reaches about 30 million people each week. He said large numbers of Iranians and other Muslims he has talked with have begun to open up to other religious options in the face of harsh Islamist governments.



All Fareed has to deal with is the harsh neighbors and a slow news day in San Jose.

--James Jewell

Why MSM Are Losing Evangelicals

People of genuine, life-controlling Christian faith had been little more than a curious sideshow for major mainstream media until these evangelical believers had a clear impact on a presidential election. Now, the industry is beginning to ask why there is such a disconnect between media and faith.



In a good Shoptalk column in Editor and Publisher, the trade publication turns to Dale Buss, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has written a forthcoming biography on James Dobson, to explain the divide.



Buss writes:



Perhaps this episode ultimately will help editors, reporters, and their publications by spawning a new determination to understand and even appeal to this increasingly important constituency. Or maybe they'll keep allowing a large group of highly aware and engaged citizens to keep slipping out of their circulation base.



It isn't that newspapers generally fail to cover religion per se. They can even excel when dealing with institutions of faith, as some newspapers did in covering child abuse by Catholic priests. But U.S. newspapers aren't so good at covering the worldview, lifestyles, and everyday existence of the 25% to 30% of Americans who describe themselves as evangelicals.Sometimes this shortcoming manifests itself as bias or outright malice, other times in sins of omission or ignorance. In any event, 72% of all evangelicals now feel the mass media are hostile to their moral and spiritual values, according to Barna Research Group, the foremost authority on contemporary evangelical opinion.



The articles sites eight types of failures:



o Settling for artificial "balance"

o Dissing the faithful

o Separating "religion" from life

o Confusing the gospel:

o Missing big stories

o Lacking religious literacy

o Misinterpreting the First Amendment

o Keeping conservatives out:



I believe it will take substantial changes in the MSM, including a transformation of hiring practices—an affirmative action of sorts. Media leaders must recognize that evangelicals have been systematically excluded from influential positions far more in recent years than blacks, women, or any other group. Doesn’t it tell you something that Nicholas Kristof at the NY Times could write in 2003 that he couldn’t “think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization”? Sure sounds like rank discrimination to me. Correcting that travesty will be a necessary step in changing the way media report on evangelicals, and how evangelicals make their media choices.

--James Jewell

Minimal Standards of Character for Baseball

Unless you’re under nine you gave up long ago on the idea of beholding professional athletes as role models. We shouldn’t confuse being in the public eye and influencing people as a result with being a role model—which is a far higher standard.



Of course any one who is in the public eye can be seen and emulated by a member of that public. It’s just that we’ve given up the idea that professional athletes are worthy of being of emulated. Unfortunately, very few are. In fact, we don’t even expect professional athletes to demonstrate admirable lifestyles or character traits. We’re tired of being disappointed.



However, in order to retain a vestige of integrity in sport, we do expect some minimum standards of character. Not because we want our children to learn from this—we just want people to play fair so it’s worthwhile for us to watch.



Societal expectations have devolved to the point where we expect little from each other. We have become a culture of “men without chests,” to use a phrase C.S. Lewis used to describe the people who lack internal gyroscopes, and are instead controlled by the mind (intellect) or the stomach (desire).



In baseball, we don’t expect much, but we do have expectations. For me, it’s purely selfish. I’ve loved the sport since grade school, when I collected baseball cards and lined them up on my living room floor; played little league baseball (the Yankees, unfortunately); went to the bowling alley to get autographs from Boston Red Sox players (remember Dick Williams); and got season tickets to the Orioles at Camden Yards to follow Cal Ripken’s drive for the ironman record.



I love the nuances of the game and the fact that so many people think it is boring because they don’t understand them.



But I hate what they’ve made of it. I hate free agency and the fact that no one except Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and precious few others stay with one team anymore. I hate that you don’t know who will comprise your home team from year to year. I hate that so few in the major leagues seem to play for the love of the game and that it has become so dominated by a team’s ability to buy the best players.



But the steroid scandal is the very worst of the problems because it shows us that many, many players—among them those who have been at the top of the game—have broken the most basic rules of fair play.



Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell wrote this week on the Jason Giambi news. Giambi stopped doing steroids last year. Boswell says:



For me, the sight of the honest version of Jason Giambi brought home again, in graphic terms, just how enormous an advantage steroid cheaters have in sports. It's not a few pounds. In many cases, it's a whole new body. To Giambi, steroids meant a fake physique that brought him a $120 million contract.



Throughout this season, the sight of Giambi has helped erase the last shreds of sympathy I felt toward baseball's gifted players who aren't satisfied with honest success and wealth, but want to break the rules so they can get more, more, more. My sympathy is now reserved for all those players at the fringes of the big leagues who see the greedy stars and think, "He's better than I am to start with. Now, he's breaking the rules, too. I have no chance unless I endanger my health and do what he does."



Giambi's admission, revealed in grand jury testimony obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, marks the first time a current star baseball player has acknowledged knowingly using steroids to enhance on-field performance. There were enough ex-players and others surrounding the sport who have spilled the beans that there hasn’t been much question what has been happening. Baseball has failed to protect its players; and to protect us, the fans, from a sham—the idea that the playing field has really been level.



"We need a very tough policy," Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said yesterday. “I am going to be very aggressive in the implementation of that policy. . . . This is no longer an issue that we are going to debate about anymore. This is something for everybody's sake -- the sport, the players, the clubs, the fans, everybody. So we will do something. We will do something."



How about returning to and enforcing the sandlot rules as minimal standards of character: Don’t cheat and don’t fight. Even the 9-year-olds will understand that.

--James Jewell

Keeping an Eye on the Trouble at TBN

When preachers get into the television business, it rarely works out well. Certainly the medium should be used to broadcast church services or messages, to reach many who don’t make it to church. But it almost always goes badly when ministers get caught up in the business of raising money to appear on television regularly, and then if successful, dealing with the temptations of being a “television personality” and making wise decisions with the millions of dollars that begin pouring in.



When it comes to dealing with temptation, it has gone badly at Trinity Broadcasting Network for quite some time. The smell of recent months coming from Costa Mesa is beginning to reveal the internal rot of the Crouch Empire.



We have an interest in this case because it is occurring at intersection of media and religion (TBN is the world’s largest religious TV network). Rooftop Bog first addressed the topic in a post on October 13.



Re-runs Used for Cash Drive

The death watch continues, with income evidently dropping and a tawdry court case dragging through preliminary motions. Religion News Blog reports that “TBN kicked off its twice-annual fund-raising drive Monday with reruns, an unprecedented move partly prompted by allegations that its founder had engaged in a homosexual tryst. The 31-year-old Christian TV Praise-a-thons have bolstered the network's budget since the beginning, now bringing in nearly $200 million in pledges annually. Officials at TBN, the world's largest religious broadcaster, are hoping that the reruns, honed to present the best moments of past telethons, will keep viewers' donations coming in.”



(Religion News Blog is not a great fan of TBN, referring to it as The Blasphemy Network).



Fox News Expose

KDFW.TV Fox 4 News in Dallas did a segment on November 29 (see it on Windows Media or Quicktime via The Door magazine here.



The station’s website said:



“Sometimes calmly, but increasingly with anger, Dr. Paul Crouch rails at unspecified charges against him. On TBN Crouch proclaimed, "Most of them a pack of lies! Right out of the pit of hell! And I can prove it!" It's the work of the devil Crouch tells his huge audience, referring to his detractors:"You'll burn in hell for eternity for the few measley dollars you think you're going to get. You're not going to get them by the way." Money paid to settle a lawsuit is at the heart of the crisis at TBN. The story begins in Colleyville, Texas at Shiloh Ranch in one of dozens of homes Crouch and his wife Jan keep in various locations around the country. In 1991, Crouch met Lonnie Ford at a TBN-affiliated drug treatment center in Colleyville. Ford served jail time for drugs and a sex offense against a 17 year-old boy. Crouch employed Ford as a chauffeur on and off, twice right after he'd been released from jail. But in 1998, after yet another jail term, Crouch refused to hire Ford back. Ford filed a wrongful termination and sexual harrassment lawsuit, alleging a homosexual relationship with Dr. Crouch. TBN reached an out-of-court settlement, paying Ford $425,000 and getting in return Ford's promise of silence.”



Ministry Watch

The charity watchdog Ministry Watch’s Ministry Watch’s Michael Barrick says, "Our concern is the $425,000. The ministry vigorously tried to hide that expenditure for six years. "The question of where the money came from is out there and the fact that it was paid at all is certainly inappropriate and the fact they attempted to cover it up is of grave concern."



Los Angeles Times Articles on TBN

I’ve found links to the Los Angeles Time articles on the Trinity Foundation website (without the registration that you have to go through at the Times site). Here are the links.



"Televangelist Paul Crouch Attempts to Keep Accuser Quiet" Los Angeles Times, 9/12/04



"Pastor's Empire Built on Acts of Faith, and Cash" Los Angeles Times, 9/19/04



"TBN's Promise: Send Money and See Riches" Los Angeles Times, 9/20/04



"Ex-Worker Accusing TBN Pastor Says He Had Sex to Keep His Job" Los Angeles Times, 9/22/04



"Will Paul Crouch Earn Reward in Heaven?" Los Angeles Times, 10/8/2004



"Live TBN Fund Drive Axed" Los Angeles Times, 10/27/2004

--James Jewell

The Christian Act of Giving at Christmas

About this time every year, millions of Americans are moved by the needs of a hungry child, the desperation of an urban family, the loneliness of a courageous soldier, the helplessness of a teenaged drug addict, or any other of the ills that are presented with great skill at Christmastime.



People will give billions of dollars this month to the charities that reach out and help. These organizations, churches, and individuals are serving the needs of people year-round . Many of us notice them only this time of year and non-profit groups often receive up to half of their annual funding during the month of December.



Philanthropy to help meet the needs of others without expectation of personal gain or recognition emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and giving fulfills the distinctive Christian concept of agape.



This was noticed as early as 361, when Emperor Julian commented on Christians caring for Christian and pagan alike: “The Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well.”



Christians give out of gratitude to God for all He has done for them, which engenders both imitation of God’s generosity and an obligation to help others. This is not to say that non-Christians do not give to help others, but the societal understanding that it is good and worthy to help people in need beyond your own clan, and to do so without expectation of return, is drawn directly from the teaching of Jesus and is part of the Christian contribution to western civilization.



Giving at Christmas is also the best repudiation of the dominance of money and consumerism during this season. “There is only one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. This act is giving.” (Jacques Ellul, Money and Power).



The charities will do all they can to keep their financial needs before you this time of year, but that’s as it should be. Put a few extra dollars in The Salvation Army kettle this Christmas. Write a larger check to your local church. Help the feeding center down the street. Maybe even help a struggling family anonymously this year. There is no better way to enrich the holiday and to honor the one whose birth we celebrate.

--James Jewell

An Association of Responsible Blogs?

Any individual who can navigate a few computer commands can find a way to create a blog and fill it with words. All of us as bloggers started that way: some of you many months ago, others of us just a few months ago, and hundreds more every day. Because of this and the nature of the Internet, it is unlikely that there can ever be effective government regulation of Internet comment. Not that any of us are yearning for that. But from what I’ve seen and experienced in my brief highly unpaid career as a blogger, it is evident that there will come a day when the blogging profession, if we can call it that, will need to help visitors determine the viability of the information they are viewing.



Blogger and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh poses the question of how limits on journalistic privilege apply to bloggers in an op-ed today.



He writes:



The First Amendment can't give special rights to the established news media and not to upstart outlets like ours. Freedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.



Yet when everyone is a journalist, a broad journalist's privilege becomes especially costly. The I.R.S. agent, for example, no longer needs to risk approaching many mainstream journalists, some of whom may turn him in. He can just ask a friend who has a blog and a political ax to grind. The friend can then post the leaked information and claim the journalist's privilege to prevent the agent from being identified. If the privilege is upheld, the friend and the agent will be safe--but our privacy will be lost.



Volokh poses good questions but no far-reaching answers. They are, however, the kinds of questions that will be increasingly posed. That will not be welcomed by the blog community, because unbridled freedom in the old Wild Western spirit is outrageously fun and worry-free.



There is that little problem of freedom in a democratic republic requiring responsibility.



Truth Laid Bear in his piece on a spectrum of standards argues that journalistic standards should not apply to the blogosphere. He writes:



In the end, it is a happy coincidence that the evolution of a spectrum of standards is such a beneficial thing, because there’s frankly no way to avoid it anymore. The genie is out of the bottle, and we’ll likely never return to the golden days of media scarcity again. Even if it does make Old Media watchdogs uncomfortable, not every blogger is going to decide to hold to the same standards of fact-checking as CBS News, and there’s no way to make them. And that’s a good thing in more ways than one.



Professor Bainbridge, also a blogger and UCLA law professor, doesn't want to apply journalistic standards to bloggers, because:



1. Bloggers are NOT journalists. We don't claim to be journalists and we never agreed to sign off on the rules journalists supposedly live with.

2. We are social critics who opine on a range of issues. One of our functions is holding the MSM accountable, which seems to annoy people like McAdams.

3. Do we really believe MSM journalists "check out the information"?



Bainbridge also argues that bloggers left unbridled balance the leftward lean of the MSM.



While I agree with both Truth Laid Bear and Professor Bainbridge for the most part, eventually the public’s trust in blogs and our effectiveness as a conduit of fact, opinion and worthwhile discussion will be determined by the blogosphere’s overall commitment to presenting the truth.

It would be worthwhile for the burgeoning blog community to begin discussing associations that will establish codes and standards, and some kind of self-policing. Not because the MSM wants us to, or because we should establish Old Media rules, but because in the long run our part in the universe of information sources will be determined by how much we can trust each other, and more importantly, how much anyone in the world with a computer can trust what they read on a blog.



The Society of Professional Journalists has a Code of Ethics (yes, really), the first version of which was based on the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 1926 code.



Its main tenets are:



o Seek Truth and Report It

o Minimize Harm

o Act Independently

o Be Accountable



We can and should continue to call the MSM to the carpet for not only violating many of society’s standards of honesty and fair play, but also their own Society’s ethical standards. These professional standards allow us to hold their own mirror in front of their faces and expose their bias and sloppy reporting.



Bloggers rely uniquely on each other to make any kind of impact—far more than print or broadcast media. Because we rely on each other and the aggregate readers of many blogs to create our power, prestige, and readership, an association of bloggers’ code of ethics can be more effective than the journalists’ code because some degree of enforcement can be exercised by the interdependent blog community.

Certainly the blogosphere is the Wild West of communications, and the individual spirit is what makes it what it is today. Viewed another way, though, bloggers are the snowboarders of the ski slopes. Rules that regulate the new breed not only keep them from maiming the Traditional Skiers--they also keep them from killing themselves.



Self-policing is the best route, and because of the way bloggers depend on each other it may provide some protection against rampant irresponsibility. And a “professional” association with a code of ethics may be a good start.



I’m a new kid in the blogosphere. But that’s how I see it today.

--James Jewell