Last year Tim Stafford was asking himself lots of questions about gambling: Why does anybody get involved in such a losing proposition? Can our state governments do anything more obscene and decadent than to entice their citizens to throw their money away?
But Tim’s most burning question about gambling had to do with the apparent lack of resistance from Christians. To be sure, there are Christian activists who fight gambling, but given the rapid spread of casino gambling throughout the U.S., Tim thought he wasn’t hearing nearly enough protest from the churches.
Why not visit someplace notably religious, he thought, some spot in the Bible Belt that had been invaded and co-opted by casinos, and see just how the churches were handling it. As CT‘s California-based senior writer, Tim has a license to travel, so he considered Iowa first, and then settled on Mississippi—on Gulfport, near Biloxi, and Tunica County, just a short drive from Memphis. (You can read Tim’s account of his trip, beginning on p. 34.)
In Las Vegas and in Reno, gambling is blended with entertainment: It peeks out from behind circus acts and showgirls and magicians who make elephants vanish and singers with lowest-common-denominator appeal. The bright lights and the fanciful architecture and the showgirls and the cheap meals all allow visitors to construct their own reasons for being there, and to make themselves believe, if they want, that gambling is marginal to their holiday.
But in Tunica County, there are no scantily clad cocktail waitresses and no lavish shows in glitzy nightclubs. Tunica is about gambling pure and simple. There is little entertainment and no sleaze. It is family friendly, complete with childcare facilities. This is where us rubes from fly-over land, with our loosely cut Kmart clothes for our more ample forms, can feel comfortable feeding the slots. The casinos attract all kinds, including a good many low rollers from towns where the coffee shop that serves biscuits and gravy is the biggest attraction around, says Tim.
But for all its appeal to the middle-American comfort zone, the Bible Belt gambling business is not family friendly. And it is not church friendly. It paralyzes churches—churches that have a moral witness but whose members rely on the service jobs created by the casinos. The gambling business devastates some lives and it co-opts others into complicity. After observing thousands of middle Americans clutching their plastic cups of quarters under the glaring casino lights, Tim still doesn’t get it: Why do people follow the siren song of Lady Luck when they know she’s all show and no go?
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