June 1999
By Don Feeney, Research Director, Minnesota State Lottery
It seems like an uncomplicated question, and one for which most people would undoubtedly venture an opinion. Certainly, if you gamble, you have no problem with its morality, and if you don't gamble, maybe you do. Simple enough.
Or is it? The history of the world's cultures and religions reveals a consistent lack of consensus on gambling from time to time and place to place. For the early Jews, the casting of dice or lots was used to determine God's will when serious decisions could not be made. Gambling for entertainment, therefore, was trifling with sacred ritual. Early Islamic writers rarely, if ever, mentioned gambling among the many major and minor sins they condemned. Later theologians, however, denounced gambling as encouraging the notion that fate, rather than divine will, determined man's affairs. In some Asian cultures gambling on sports is considered immoral but gambling on other human activities is not. Many people are surprised to learn that the Bible contains no prohibition on gambling, resulting in Christian theologians being sharply divided on the subject. Medieval philosophers like Aquinus stressed that divine providence and luck were not incompatible, but later theologians sharply disagreed. Calvin in 1559 wrote "Who likewise does not leave lots to the blindness of fortune? Yet the Lord leaves them not, but claims the disposal of them to himself." A century and a half later, the Puritan cleric Cotton Mather argued that since not all wagers were returned as prizes, gambling for civic purposes constituted theft. But at the same time, every Christian denomination in colonial America (except the Quakers) operated lotteries.
Surprisingly, compulsive gambling has played at best a minor part in this debate. Moral objections to gambling have focused on its perceived incompatibility with God's role in man's affairs and its alleged subversion of the work ethic. Gambling also struggles with its image as a lower-class activity (there is a long history in England of distinctions between the games favored by the wealthy and those played by the poor). Other critics condemn it, along with other leisure activities, as a waste of time that could be devoted to a higher purpose.
With this as background, it should come as no surprise that Minnesotans' attitudes towards the morality of gambling are ambivalent. In a recent survey, 15 percent of the state's adults strongly agreed with the statement "I am opposed to gambling for moral or religious reasons." Another 9 percent "agreed somewhat" with the statement, meaning that almost one in four Minnesotans express some moral misgivings.
Yet many of these people gamble. More than half (56 percent) of those in strong agreement with the statement reported gambling in the previous year, as did 79 percent of those expressing mild agreement. (See graph on page 1.) What accounts for this seeming inconsistency? It's tempting to blame hypocrisy or our willingness (as it has been said) to confess our neighbor's sins.
But I think, instead, that it's recognition of the complexity of the issue. It may be that to some gambling is acceptable when it is done to benefit charity, as with the purchase of a raffle ticket or pulltab, but not when it is done at a for-profit facility such as a Las Vegas casino. It may be acceptable as casual entertainment, like buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store, but not as the focus of an evening's entertainment. Or it may be that gambling with restraint is acceptable, but gambling in excess is immoral, with "restraint" often defined as what you do and "excess" what your neighbor does.
It is this ambiguity that has made policy decisions so difficult. (Only 12 percent of the state's adults strongly agree that all gambling should be outlawed.) No single form of gambling is either universally accepted or universally despised, and there are few people who either condemn all or accept all. We have both gambled and opposed gambling for thousands of years without reaching a consensus, and we should not expect one anytime soon. Most of us are stuck somewhere in the vast, ambiguous, constantly shifting middle ground. Like art, we don't know much about it, but we know what we like.
Gambling Problems Resource Center
2720 Highway 10
Mounds View, MN 55112
