Church leaders in Jamaica have denounced government plans to approve horse racing on Sundays, saying gambling will harm the poor and debase society’s morals.The president of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals called the decision to allow Sunday racing at Caymanas Park in November “appalling.”
“It is a shame we are heading in this direction,” Peter Garth said at Sept 18 press conference.
“Gambling is an anti-social and non-productive activity, no matter on which day it occurs,” that Anglican Bishop of Jamaica Alfred Reid charged in an article published in the Gleaner on Sept 28.
“The problem with Sunday racing” was that it “adds to an already existing situation. It extends something that should rather be curtailed,” he argued, as the “gambling industry is one of the most effective means of transferring money from the poor to the rich.
“It is a cynical manipulation of the desperation of the poor who are conned into risking the little that they have in the hope of winning big,” he said.
In a bid to boost the flagging tourism industry, the Jamaican government has discussed allowing casinos to open in the resort areas of Montego Bay and Trelawny to win over gamblers from the Bahamas and other Caribbean tourist spots.
Last week the Finance Ministry announced that Sunday racing would begin on Nov 29. Currently racing takes place on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Bishop Reid said the Church had not been able to “stop the lottery, the casino, the proliferation of so-called gambling parlours.”
He added that “not even the Government” could have stopped it, as “we know who really wields power in Jamaica. Not the elected government, but the people who control money and who, in pursuit of material wealth, will crush anyone who dares to resist.”
The bishop responded to charges of “hypocrisy” launched against the church by gambling supporters, saying they “may be true, since we aspire to a humanly unattainable ideal. However, in this case, the real hypocrisy is the pretence to have an open and democratic society in which all views contend while, at the same time, seeking to silence the Church and any other person with a contrary view.”
Critics had charged the church had "overstepped its bounds by objecting to the extension of gambling in this way,” Bishop Reid said. However the “clear implication” of this sort of attack was that the powerful have the “authority to decide the scope and boundaries of the Church's sphere of activity.”
The pro-gambling campaign was a “non-too-subtle anti-church and anti-Christian campaign,” Bishop Reid charged, urging the government to turn back from its shortsighted alliance with the gambling industry.
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