{"id":107743,"date":"2025-08-30T11:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T11:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/107743\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T11:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T11:33:08","slug":"sports-betting-factors-out-god-but-pastoral-help-for-gamblers-waning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/107743\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports betting \u2018factors out God\u2019 but pastoral help for gamblers waning"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story has been updated.<\/p>\n

RENO, Nev. (BP) \u2013 Danny started betting on high school sports at age 12. He was good at it, so by 14 he had $80,000 in a bank account and a fake ID he used for gambling. That\u2019s when his parents took him to see the family\u2019s pastor, Joe Taylor at South Reno Baptist Church in Reno, Nev.<\/p>\n

Gambling \u201cis all I think about,\u201d Danny told the pastor. \u201cI\u2019m quitting school. My parents are going to kill me, but I\u2019m doing it because I can make a living that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he did \u2013 for a while. He bought a home, got married and used his incredible memory to count cards in casinos (which is illegal), amassing huge winnings. Finally, he decided to take small portions of crystal meth to intensify his recall. That led to a drug addiction, a divorce and eventually a call to his parents that Danny had been found dead in Las Vegas from an overdose. Taylor went with Danny\u2019s father to identify the body.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis body was emaciated,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cHe looked like Danny, but he didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is one of many stories Taylor can tell about gambling\u2019s ruinous results. He can see 14 casinos from his study window, and his church on average ministers to three people each day who have lost everything to gaming. He has thought about hiring an associate pastor solely to minister to people struggling with gambling. If you ask Taylor to tell you a story of someone who gambled in moderation and had fun, he can\u2019t. \u201cI don\u2019t have any good stories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though sports gaming often is portrayed as harmless, Taylor and Southern Baptist ethicist Jeffry Riley seek to unmask the physical and spiritual destruction it causes.<\/p>\n

With college and NFL football kicking off a new season, sports gambling is poised to ramp up. Since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court permitted all 50 states<\/a> to sponsor gambling on sports, the industry has soared. Revenue from sports betting in America increased from $400 million in 2018 to $13.71 billion last year, according to ESPN<\/a>. Football is the most popular sport for wagers, with $35 billion wagered during last year\u2019s NFL regular season and nearly $1.4 billion on the Super Bowl alone.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Southern Baptist Convention resolutions have condemned gambling at least 19 times, including a 2025 resolution<\/a> \u201con the harmful and predatory nature of sports betting\u201d that \u201ccondemn[ed] sports betting in all its forms.\u201d Sports gambling, the resolution stated, is inconsistent \u201cwith the biblical principles of stewardship, work, and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But can sports gambling be good, clean fun if practiced in moderation? No, says Riley, professor of ethics at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.<\/p>\n

The \u201cappeal of gambling\u201d is \u201crelated very directly to the sinful flesh,\u201d he said, including covetousness, materialism and greed. Among Riley\u2019s biblical reasons for opposing all forms of gambling:<\/p>\n

It discourages contentment (1 Timothy 8:8-10).It distorts Jesus\u2019 command to take care of our neighbors (Matthew 22:39). Gambling is a \u201czero sum game,\u201d where someone must lose for another to win. That constitutes \u201crobbery by mutual consent.\u201dIt involves \u201cthe reckless investment of God-given resources\u201d (Matthew 25:14-30).It undermines a healthy philosophy of work, industry and saving. The gambling industry is \u201cgaining income by selling the myth of getting rich and getting the American dream without working for it.\u201dIt can be habit forming and addictive.<\/p>\n

\u201cGambling factors out God,\u201d said Riley, who served on the 2017 SBC Resolutions Committee, which proposed a resolution<\/a> adopted by the Convention \u201con the sin of gambling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission released a publication called Pay to Play: A Practical Guide to Addressing Gambling in the Church <\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is such a serious issue, a plague that is affecting so many believers in our churches,\u201d said Dr. RaShan Frost director of research for the ERLC. \u201cThat\u2019s why we worked hard to produce a theological and practical guide\u2014in addition to an in-depth white paper\u2014that we think will be helpful to pastors as they navigate this growing epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commission spoke<\/a> against treating athletes as a commodity in a separate article this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristians need to make every effort to speak against the temptation of commodifying athletes, which sports betting inevitably fosters,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Baptists\u2019 opposition to gambling dates to at least the 1800s, said Barry Hankins, professor of history at Baylor University. Although many 19th and early 20th century Baptists claimed \u201cchurches should stay out of politics\u201d and only \u201caddress morality,\u201d they \u201cgrouped gambling with things like alcohol consumption and dancing as moral issues.\u201d That led to strong opposition of gambling.<\/p>\n

As the 20th century wore on, Baptists divided over whether churches should engage the political realm, Hankins said. But even those \u201cwho remained wary of politics \u2026 tended to make exceptions for alcohol and gambling.\u201d<\/p>\n

But passion for opposing gambling may be waning in the 21st century, according to Lifeway Research. Just 55 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors believe betting on sports is morally wrong, a 2024 Lifeway Research survey<\/a> found. That marks a slight decrease from a 2018 survey<\/a>, in which 59 percent of pastors said sports betting is morally wrong.<\/p>\n

A more drastic decrease came in the number of pastors who plan to do something about sports betting. In 2018, 88 percent of pastors said they had offered counseling in the past year for those struggling with gambling debt or addiction. In 2024, the figure dropped to 44 percent. In 2018, 65 percent said they had used private conversations to discourage participation in sports betting. The figure dropped to 32 percent last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPastors\u2019 2018 intentions were to fight to keep our culture from hurting itself by lowering a standard,\u201d said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. \u201cNow that most states have legalized sports betting, pastors appear less interested in focusing on this behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor hopes that trend will reverse. God\u2019s Word demands it, he says. If someone told him they were going to engage in moderate, recreational sports betting, he would hand them a Bible and say, \u201cTell me what you believe about that book.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they treat the Bible as their authority, he says, they will not gamble. He demonstrates that reality by asking would-be sports betters to read a series of Scriptures, including Proverbs 13:11, Hebrews 13:5 and Matthew 6:24.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to make a decision based on something you\u2019ve gone before the Lord with,\u201d Taylor said. He wishes Paul Miller would have made his decision that way.<\/p>\n

Miller won big at gambling, buying homes and even an airplane with his winnings. Then he lost it all in a year, got divorced and committed suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what is the worst drug here,\u201d Taylor said. It might be gambling because \u201cgambling robs you in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story has been updated. RENO, Nev. (BP) \u2013 Danny started betting on high school sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-107743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}