gambling

A former church secretary from Alabama was recently sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison after stealing over $89,000 from her church, using the funds for personal expenses, and gambling it away at casinos.

According to a press release from the Department of Justice, 59-year-old Carmen Ramer Davis from Opp was sentenced to 18 months in prison last Thursday. From 2006 through 2019, she served as secretary for Brooklyn Congregational Methodist Church in Coffee County, where she had access to the church’s bank accounts and had the authority to pay for the church’s bills and expenses.

If our intuitions do influence our moral decisions, even overriding our best intentions and our rationality, we’d do well to pay attention to what is shaping them. What’s legally available (or not) shapes them, and not just because people don’t want to get in trouble. Laws create conditions, such as whether we have access to certain products and advertising. Laws make some financial incentives possible, but not others. They can also normalize or stigmatize behaviors. In other words, laws play a role in fostering the habits of a people, and people tend to be formed by their habits. Laws should not enable and should never incentivize bad habits. Good habits, on the other hand, also form our moral intuitions. 

Television commentator and Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy is criticizing the NFL’s partnerships with gaming companies, saying the league is hypocritical for “promoting gambling” while telling its players not to participate.

Theologian and seminary president Albert Mohler says evangelicals who believe gambling isn't a moral issue need to consider the real-world impact on families.

Today is what some call “the professional sports equinox,” the one night of the year where the NBA, NHL, MLB, and the NFL all have games. For sports fans, it’s like Christmas, Easter, Labor Day, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. And, because of the new culture-wide push for sports gambling, Friday morning may bring quite the hangover.

The legalization and growth of online gambling has coincided with the legalization of recreational marijuana. This is no coincidence. After all, laws are mostly downstream from the larger culture, and these laws do far more to expand personal license. Rather, they reflect and reinforce an unmistakable message, especially to young men, to aim low, to think short-term thoughts about life and the world, to pursue immediate gratification, and to not aspire to too much.

An Alabama Baptist church that suffered building damage during a tornado is returning a $25,000 donation from a casino, citing a conflict of interest.

This week, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibits sports gambling. The landmark decision gives states the right to legalize betting on sports.

Some Christian conservative groups say they are planning to challenge a Supreme Court ruling that ended a federal ban on sports gambling outside of Nevada.

What do legalized gambling and legalized pot have in common? They fill government coffers and fuel social pathologies -- all in the name of personal freedom. I’ll explain, next on BreakPoint.