United Methodist Church considers gambling a 'menace to society'
8/24/1998 NOTE: This story may be used as a sidebar to UMNS #497. by United Methodist News Service Gambling, according to the United Methodist Church's Social Principles, is a "menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral, social, economic, and spiritual life, and destructive to good government."
The Social Principles, contained in the church's Book of Discipline, are a "prayerful and thoughtful effort on the part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in the United Methodist traditions." The General Conference, the top legislative body of the denomination, meets every four years and is the only entity that can make official policy for the church.
"As an act of faith and concern, Christians should abstain from gambling and should strive to minister to those victimized by the practice," according to the statement in the Social Principles. "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."
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