Committee on Gambling Concerns

Current Issues

Indiana legislators are already working ahead of January 2006’s legislative session to consider legalizing cherry masters and expanding video slot machines. Governor Daniels has not yet “shown his hand” on the issue of expansion.

Pray that the insatiable desire of our own legislature for gambling monies will soon die out. Be ready to contact your legislators (see right) and tell them you are opposed to any expansion of gambling in any form, for any reason, including cherry masters and video slot machines.

Our Purpose

The purpose of the Committee on Gambling Concerns is to monitor state and national legislation pertaining to gambling, to raise awareness on local and state levels about gambling and related problems, to provide speakers to churches and groups, to supply literature, to challenge and confront gambling interests’ expansion efforts, to reach beyond United Methodist churches, to connect with the Indiana Coalition Against Legalized Gambling and the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, to collect and discuss the latest developments on gambling, to write editorials on gambling, and to keep gambling issues before United Methodists.

One of the strongest statements in the United Methodist Social Principles is on the topic of gambling.

“Gambling is a menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral, social, economic, and spiritual life, and destructive of good government. As an act of faith, Christians should abstain from gambling and should strive to minister to those victimized by the practice. Where gambling has become addictive, the Church will encourage such individuals to receive therapeutic assistance so that the individual’s energies may be redirected into positive and constructive ends. The Church should promote standards and personal lifestyles that would make unnecessary and undesirable the resort to commercial gambling—including public lotteries—as a recreation, as an escape, or as a means of producing public revenue or funds for support of charities or government.” (¶ 163-G)