were resettled with the help of fifty–eight congregations.
• 360 refugees were placed in jobs.
• 281 Salvadorans and Guatemalans were provided emergency housing.
• $1.3 million worth of food passed through the Food Buying Service warehouse to food banks.
• 150 persons attended the Legislative Conference.
• Over 2,000 individuals and congregations received the legislative newsletter ALERT every week during the legislative session.
Stepping down from the Chair in 1983, I was appointed convener of a WAC ad hoc committee to study and report on private gambling and the proposed lottery in Washington State. At that time few states in the Union possessed state lotteries. The WAC advocated in the state legislature to keep a state–run lottery out of the picture. To no avail.
Not many in the churches knew of the millions of dollars in favor of the lotteries flowing into states from the gambling enterprises. Regularly newly designed games to entice the consumer came on board. Meanwhile, more and more church members found their way to Las Vegas or Reno to fritter away their God–given assets.
I well remember standing on a street corner with Rev. Paul Pruitt, a United Church of Christ minister and a member of the state legislature. Earnestly he said to me, “I’ve not had one letter or phone call from any of the churches urging me to oppose the onset of the lottery in the state.”
I think I have never heard a homily devoted to Christian stewardship in relation to gambling. I do have a record from the 1978 General Synod when Rev. Avery Post, President, UCC, said, “I do not want to bring people into our covenant on low demands, but as members we accept the stewardship of time and money . . . ”
In the spring of 1975, in a series of pulpit words on social issues, I broached the subject of gambling. I said:
Let’s suppose two primitives meet for a first time in a clearing, with a bundle of fur skins over one’s shoulder and the other with a basket full of grain on his head. Simultaneously, they think, “Exchange!” How might that exchange occur? One could by brute force or trickery rob the other. Or they might negotiate some sort of barter system. They might then make some sort of exchange based on a common, valuable currency. Who knows, they might even exchange gifts.
There is one more exchange possibility. I quote from the 1975 pulpit word:
They could spot a piece of wood and throw it in a stream. If it comes down on the side with the bark showing, the pelts guy surrenders them all to the grain guy. If the non–bark side is up, then the pelts guy gets all the grain. It’s an exchange. We call it gambling.
Gambling is a wild ride on the fatalistic back of chance. Exciting. Addictive. Also, antisocial and without any basis in reason.
One more element of concern enters. It’s illustrated by my mother’s refusal in my childhood to let me play marbles “for keepsies.” She understood that such behavior loses the element of conscience. In the gambling act, there is a desire to win all, even if that leaves the other destitute.
In my homily, I weighed the pros and cons. Is not all of life, such as driving a car, a sort of gamble? Is not investment in the stock market a gambling behavior? Or is gambling not a benevolent behavior if public education receives a part of the proceeds? Or what if churches hold bingo parties to raise money for their operation? Even if gambling is an inferior sort of activity, may we not reuse the old phrase, “The devil’s water being used to turn the Lord’s mill”?
I countered these rationales with a central argument: the essence of the act is chance, and in this way lies outside the Christian’s understanding of careful stewardship of resources. I noted that James Wall, editor of the widely–read periodical, “Christian Century,” had been decrying the increase of gambling, a practice he found inimical to the tradition of the Christian faith and one that exploited the human temptation to greed.
I also argued that other human behavior that involves chance, such as climbing a mountain, involves all sorts of prudential, cautionary preparation. In gambling, all caution goes out the window, unless of course it involves “smart money” which is unethical on the part of the gambler.
In 1964, the State of New Hampshire introduced the public lottery to gain public revenue. Since then almost all states have fallen in line, many with inter–state lotteries. In New Hampshire, the state’s road signs once read, “A lottery ticket is an ideal Christmas gift.”
Is not the institution of state–sponsored gambling, with its increase in addictive behavior, one sign of a disintegrating civilization? And a practice enhancing such decline? And if a public service is worth supporting why not ask for it in the out–front mode of progressive taxes, rather than subtly out of the back pocket of weaker citizens?
Alas, the horse is out of the barn. Even to speak and write in the above manner seems quaint, does it not?
The Gay Affair
In the Spring of 1978, in my seventh year as minister in Pullman, Washington, I undertook to bring to the Sunday morning pulpit four post–Easter messages on current social issues—gambling, abortion, homosexuality, and war. Nothing controversial about those, eh?
As it happened, the message on homosexuality fell on Father’s Day. I am sure I noticed that. Convinced that human sexual activity and procreation go hand in hand, I saw no reason to shift the topic to another date. One woman in the congregation found herself quite upset that the subject matter coincided with the celebration of the male parent.
In a few words, let me summarize what I said from the pulpit. I began with allusions to a few of the scripture texts which reference the subject: Gen 19:1–29; Lev 18:12, 20:13, and Rom 1:18–28. I noted, too, those texts that lift up heterosexual relationships: Gen 1:23 (male and female in creation), John 2:1–11 (wedding in Cana), and Eph 5:22–33 (analogy on unity in the church to unity in male/female marriage).
I spent extra time with Rom 1:18–28. Paul’s topic is idolatry. He asserts that those who bow to untrue Gods produce a darkening of minds. The turn to same–sex behavior becomes one of the expressions of some persons caught up in an idolatrous society. In this way, Paul seems to offer an implicit explanation as to why many homosexual persons do not feel this inclination is a matter of choice. Paul seems to speak of behavior modification by cultural influence.
I then turned to the arena of experience, though much, for better or worse, remained closeted in 1978. I referred to two persons. I mentioned Rev. Malcom Boyd, an Episcopal priest and writer, who had “outed” himself, noting that his book, Are You Running With Me Jesus?, had much good to say. I then quoted Rev. Nathaniel Guptill, then the UCC Conference Minister in Connecticut, who in public remarks, had argued that the aversion many people have to homosexual behavior probably should not be exorcised, “since it is a part of a system of sexual inhibitions that protects children from molestation by their parents and also sisters from their brothers, making intimate family life possible.”9
I then began to become persuasive through reason. I argued for the civil rights of homosexual persons, without moving to the approval of the lifestyle. Loving elements appearing in gay and adulterous relationships need not lead to approval.
I appealed to folk to “test the spirits,” so not to become swept along in tides of public opinion. I offered a quotation, growing out of what I called an “unfaithful spirit,” from a passage in Sally Gearhart and William Johnson,
