Early Christians:

Gambling is one of mankind’s oldest activities, as evidenced by writings and equipment found in
tombs and other places. It was regulated, which as a rule meant severely curtailed, in the laws
of ancient China and Rome as well as in the Jewish Talmud and by Islam and Buddhism, and in
ancient Egypt inveterate gamblers could be sentenced to forced labor in the quarries. The
origin of gambling is considered to be divinatory: by casting marked sticks and other objects
and interpreting the outcome, man sought knowledge of the future and the intentions of the
gods. From this it was a very short step to betting on the outcome of the throws. The Bible
contains many references to the casting of lots to divide property. One well-known instance is
the casting of lots by Roman guards (which in all likelihood meant that they threw
knucklebones) for the garment of Jesus during the Crucifixion. This is mentioned in all four of
the Gospels and has been used for centuries as a warning example by antigambling crusaders.
However, in ancient times casting lots was not considered to be gambling in the modern sense
but instead was connected with inevitable destiny, or fate. Anthropologists have also pointed to
the fact that gambling is more prevalent in societies where there is a widespread belief in gods
and spirits whose benevolence may be sought. The casting of lots, not infrequently dice, has
been used in many cultures to dispense justice and point out criminals at trials in Sweden as
late as 1803. The Greek word for justice, dike, comes from a word that means “to throw,” in the
sense of throwing dice.

The earliest gambling houses which could reasonably be compared to casinos started to appear
in the early 17th century in Italy. For example, in 1638, the Ridotto was established in Venice to
provide a controlled gambling environment amidst the chaos of the annual carnival season.
Casinos started to spring up all over continental Europe during the 19th century, while at the
same time in the US much more informal gambling houses were in vogue. Now when we think
of casinos, we tend to picture the Las Vegas Strip, which grew out of the ashes of the
Depression in America. Roulette as we know it today originated in the gaming houses of Paris,
where players would have been familiar with the wheel we now refer to (ironically enough) as
the American Roulette wheel. Online gambling businesses started appearing in the 1990s. It
was a time when the internet was taking off commercially, which was used for the transfer of
many land-based industries into the virtual world. The gambling industry was one of the first to
reap the benefits.

Back then the games were crude for today’s standards, but efficient for the standards of the
1990s. They certainly were not as a regulated as today when there is almost dozen third-party
auditors and organizations that keep the standards in place. No wonder that the first online
casinos never managed to stay alive up until today. The oldest today in operation are from 1997
or maybe 1996, but only a couple of those exist. In 1998 the first online poker sites emerged.
Even as early as this the online casino market was said to be worth $830 million. Then in 1999
multiplayer online gambling was introduced, opening up interactivity between players and can
be said to have led to the current trend of MMOPRGs, a billion-dollar industry with no signs of
stopping.

Religious critiques of gambling can therefore to some extent be explained by seeing gambling
as an activity that in certain matters competes with religion, as suggested before by a few
scholars. From a psychoanalytical perspective it has even been argued that gambling is a
‘secular “religion” for the obsessional neurotic’ and that the real reason Christians regard it as
sinful is that gambling ‘cannot be tolerated because it provides a similar alternative to
Christianity’ (Fuller, 1974, p. 67). Significantly, Islam is a world religion with a strong emphasis
on monotheism and also consistently condemning gambling. In Islamic societies gambling is
either totally forbidden or very restricted (F. Rosenthal, 1975). Gambling is explicitly
condemned as sinful in the Koran, which by Muslims is regarded as the complete and final
revelation from the only God.

From its origin, Christianity has been critical of gambling (Slater, 1909). Early Church councils
forbade games of chance, and up to the time of the Reformation the Church in general viewed
gambling as sinful and reprehensible. After the Reformation, the current liberal attitude of the
Roman Catholic Church towards gambling gradually emerged. Games of chance are not
regarded as sinful in themselves, but only when played to excess and when they ‘deprive
someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others’ (The Roman
Catholic Catechism, paragraph 2413). There are, however, many Roman Catholics, especially in
the United States, who are strongly opposed to gambling and would like the Church to
reconsider its current standpoint

In a relationship of concord, there is considerable overlap between the two spheres. Gambling
and religion fit well together. In a hypothetical world, where there was no chance and
everything was fully predictable, there would certainly be no gambling and probably no
religion. In a relationship of conflict, the shared domain is minimal, comprising only a few
elements, such as the belief that God can reward the deserving with a lottery win, a belief of
which official religion typically disapproves. Instead, there are a number of elements that exist
in various versions: for instance, ‘luck’ versus ‘God's providence’, and the hope of the lottery
gambler for a better life versus the hope for salvation and grace of the Christian believer.
Official religion thereby has one more reason, in addition to the moralistic and theological ones,
for denouncing gambling. From a Christian perspective, gambling is wrong not only because it
relies on a wish to receive without giving and because it introduces chance into the ordered
world of God but also because it in some respects offers an alternative path to experiences that
are of a transcendental and religious nature.

Reference:

Binde, P. (2007). Gambling and religion: Histories of concord and conflict. Retrieved from
shorturl.at/atxSW

History of Gambling (n.d). retrieved from shorturl.at/gsvGW

Glimne, D. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/gambling/History