A Statement Against Gambling Enterprises for Gettysburg

Adopted by the Board of Directors
May 4, 2005

In light of proposals recently made public to create opportunity for legalized gambling in the Gettysburg area, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, the oldest graduate and professional school of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), wishes to register its opposition to such a project.

Over the last century, the ELCA Lutherans and their predecessor churches have studied and opposed gambling as means of raising funds, both within the church and in the greater community. The ELCA’s Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs and the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania have registered opposition to gambling generally and advocated specifically against the legislation expanding legalized gambling in Pennsylvania adopted by the PA General Assembly in July 2004.

The Seminary’s opposition derives from this long standing position, and the school’s historic commitment to economic justice, to a high quality of community life, and to the symbolic role Gettysburg plays in the nation.

Every good society has an abiding responsibility to protect those vulnerable to negative social forces, and gambling represents a multivalent attack on the health of a community. While communities often hope for increased tax revenues from gambling, it is well documented that persons of lower income spend a higher percentage of their income than those of greater means in gambling facilities. Gambling enterprises become a hidden form of a regressive tax in which wealthy persons pay disproportionately less than lower income persons, motivated by their hope (against nearly impossible odds) to gain wealth.

The negative side effects of gambling more than offset the benefits of any increase in tax revenues, even though they are not always readily apparent. Hidden costs to community infrastructure include land use, increases in crime rate and accompanying costs in law enforcement, courts and jail facilities. These hidden costs often fail to be documented in the development proposals. It is virtually impossible to calculate the cost to families of those vulnerable to gambling addictions in mounting debt load and marital and family stress. Slot machines, the gambling activity mentioned in the recent Gettysburg Times news reports, are seen as more addictive than other forms of gambling. Moreover, the greater Gettysburg community may not be able to see and weigh the future costs to the local retail economy when restaurants and other retailers are put out of business by cut rate food and services offered by gambling enterprises to keep customers in the facilities. When gambling attracts disposable income, it often redirects such funds from charitable giving and other more productive economic activity. The facts are simple: tax gains are countered by dramatically increased costs; jobs gained in construction and services may or may not balance those lost in established food, service and other retail centers.

For Gettysburg to host a gambling facility of any kind is to cheapen and diminish the symbolic value of this place and to abandon the historic witness it plays in American history. Gettysburg, known around the world for its turning point in a great civil war, became a symbol of societal and national unity and sacrifice for the sake of human dignity and freedom. Gettysburg is known for its commitment to education and the values of its role in preserving space for the interpretation of the historic battle, including President Abraham Lincoln’s own words about the great sacrifice of so many lives for the sake of the nation’s best values. Gambling does not offer any healthy enhancement to those who visit this place.

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Therefore, with prayerful consideration and deliberation, it is the conclusion of the Board of Directors of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg that the expansion of gambling is not healthy for this or any other community that cares about its quality of life and its commitments to education, history, and the common good.

This Seminary calls upon the greater Gettysburg community, its institutions and governmental authorities to join in opposition against any plans to develop a legalized gambling enterprise in Adams County of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

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Sources:

See the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s six part study " Gambling: A Study for Congregations" , its 1999 social statement “Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All,” and “Gambling and the Public Good,” a 1984 statement of the American Lutheran Church. Additional statements by 20 th century Lutheran church bodies ( United Lutheran Church in America) called for resistance to gambling in 1936 and 1956.

See the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania’s website www.lamp.org Legislative Review 2003-04 http://www.lamp.org/InterSections.htm