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January 2005 |
From the bishop
A better way
I am a sports fan, and I am a Colts fan, and I even agree that a new stadium would be a benefit to central Indiana as well as to the Colts. But I am not a fan of expanding gambling in Indiana to pay for it.
While the proponents of the new stadium and expanded gambling like to talk about the benefits from gambling (they make it sound like free money), other people are well aware of the costs of expanded gambling upon our social fabric. While serving as Bishop of The United Methodist Church of the Dakotas, I learned that 90 percent of the white collar-crime in our communities there was gambling-related as people embezzled and stole in order to keep up their gambling habits. I also heard story after story of marriages and families destroyed when one member became addicted to gambling. That social cost is one of the many costs which outweigh expanded gambling. Do we really want downtown Indianapolis to be modeled after Las Vegas or Atlantic City or Deadwood, South Dakota?
Our United Methodist Social Principles state clearly our opposition to the expansion 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 and concern, 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."
During his campaign, Governor-elect Mitch Daniels stated his opposition to the expansion of gambling in Indiana, and I believe he meant it. So I hope that our new governor, our state legislature, and our Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council will oppose paying for a new stadium by expanding gambling to include pull-tab slots in downtown Indianapolis or anywhere else. Surely there must be a better way to pay for a new stadium. Surely there must be a better way to safeguard the social fabric of our communities here in Indiana.
Bishop Michael J. Coyner
Indiana Area of The
United Methodist Church
Last updated on 25 Apr 2008