Pastoral perspective on gambling

The pastoral perspective
From the nineteenth century onwards, gambling by the poor became more prevalent, addictive, and destructive. Protestant Churches - particularly from the Reformed tradition - and bodies like The Salvation Army became increasingly opposed to gambling as they engaged with its terrible effects on the people in the slums of the newly industrialised cities. Their critique of gambling was that it was addictive; that it held out a false and destructive hope as the new “opium of the people”; that it destroyed family life, and that it plunged many into despair. John Wesley explicitly counted gambling as a means of gain inconsistent with love of neighbour.

This position has also traditionally been shared by some left-wing political groups, as expressed by Martin Bright (New Statesman, 4 September 2006):
“When I was growing up, gambling was something that distinguished my working class grandparents from my middle-class parents. The older generation saw it as a harmless flutter on the horses, while my mum and dad knew that gambling helped keep their parents poor.” The Church of Scotland has fairly consistently adopted a formal position of total opposition to gambling.



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