Government and Gambling
Religion & Liberty Online

Government and Gambling

Over at Mere Comments I note the recent invective against gambling leveled by Al Mohler and Russell Moore. I contend that as opposed to casinos, lotteries are in fact the most troubling example of state-sponsored gambling. And I also worry a bit about the use of legal means to prohibit gambling, as it isn’t so clear to me that gambling is always and in every case a moral evil.

Thus, I write, that cultural rather than primarily political attempts to curb gambling are superior for a number of reasons, including “that if you are actually wrong about the moral status of the thing in question, you haven’t improperly used the coercive force of government to turn something that is, at least in some cases, morally permissible into something that is illegal.”

Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.