Religious Gambling by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 5, 1870

Religious Gambling.

By Jos. Clarke

[The following scathing rebuke given by the New York Tribune, might be published as evidence of the moral fall which has happened to the nominal churches as a class, and might be read by all, as an index of the feelings of sober, thinking men, who make no profession of religion. How are the mighty fallen? Jos. Clarke.]

We had occasion the other day to question the expediency of ministers of the gospel lending their authority to promote the sale of nostrums or inventions, with the merits of which they necessarily must be but slightly acquainted. Sewing machines or quack medicines had better be left to push their own way in the market unheralded by any odor of sanctity or devotional horn-blowing, although, as we before remarked, this clerical indorsement is most frequently given out of mere careless good nature, or as the only practicable return for a personal gift.

But there are modes of money-getting less legitimate than the vending of patents or pills which it has become so common for clergymen, both Protestant and Catholic, not only to sanction, but begin, that they have grown to be regarded by the public as an essential part of church machinery. We mean the lotteries and raffles, which are usually set like spring-guns and pitfalls for the entrapment of the unwary victim who stumbles into that abyss of horrors, a church fair. The matter is ordinarily passed over with a good-humored joke. Nobody denies that in principle they are a petty imitation of the lotteries repressed in most of the States by law, against which, as against any species of gambling, the pulpit regularly fulminates its denunciation. But then the imitation is so very petty, and the motive assigned so very good! The church debt must be paid, or the missionary sent, or the hospital kept up, so people only laugh patiently at the importunate ladies, especially if they are pretty and young, with their wearisome grab-bags and numbered tickets for cakes and slippers.

Lately, however, the matter has grown more serious, and has been thrust into unpleasant prominence. One church advertises a complete scheme of graduated prizes, from a house to a gold finger-ring. Another religious society in West Virginia has canvassed all the Eastern cities with a proposed lottery for the disposal of a hundred acres of valuable land; and at a respectable church fair in the city of Brotherly Love, the other day, the unbrotherly capabilities of the crowd were developed by the lottery to the extent of some broken heads and a free fight, which the voice of the Rev. Mr. ———, we are told, though raised to a shout, was totally unable to quell. That of the policeman proved more efficacious, we presume, as the whole party were marched off in his custody.

It is with diffidence that the secular press should touch upon any flaws in the management or executive functions of the churches. Not that the individual members of religious bodies are not human, and in need of sharp and wholesome discipline. But believing as we do that the future health of the nation depends largely upon the religious element contained in the different sects, we are cautious in even seeming to join in the now popular outcry against them, which would stigmatize all orthodox Christians as bigots, and every clergyman as a Cream Cheese or a Chadband. It is only when an inconsistency in church management becomes so glaring as to be known of all men as a public evil, that we feel justified in calling the attention of religious teachers to it. When the policeman is called in, it is high time the pastor should be wakened and set to his work.

The matter may seem trivial. Nothing is trivial by which Christianity is brought into disrepute. We are aware that the introduction of gambling in greater or less degree into the business transactions of a church does not originate ordinarily with the clergyman, but with the shrewd business men and women to whose care its financial operations are intrusted, and whose zeal will often induce them to make use of means to gain money for the sake of the church, which neither their honor nor dignity would allow them to use for their own. When once the attention of clergymen is called to this matter, they will, we are confident, repress the short-sighted energy of their flock. Religion is too vital a matter, even to the political world, for us willingly to see her wounded in the house of her friends.