I think Gambling is bad. However on a small scale it is not that bad but on a large scale it produces a lot of suffering.

The UCC has a policy on Gambling which supports a boycott of  funds generated from gambling, like the trillium fund. However in effect the church only boycotts gambling funds that come from government run casinos and lotteries. (Small scale gambling)

(From The United Church http://www.united-church.ca/economic/gambling)

Traditional reasons for opposition to gambling include the following:

• It defines success materially, with very few "winners" succeeding at the expense of the vast majority of "losers." Building "the people" is replaced by competition among individuals.
• It goes against an equitable division of God's creation amongst God's people.
• It exploits the vulnerable in the community (problem gamblers and those affected by their behaviour) by vested interests.

However as Michael Moore points out in his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story,"     The bad guys in Moore's mind are big banks and hedge funds which "gambled" investors' money in complex derivatives that few, if any, really understood and which belonged in the casino.

So in essence that United Church opposes small scale gambling at a cost of excluding the disabled from church, while not supporting a boycott of large scale gambling ingaged in by big banks and hedge funds. 

The latest economic crisis is actually killing millions due to the rise of food prices and increased homelessness. This is just a futhering of the global death toll caused by capitalism. The UCC sort of hints at this when they condem empire. 

However the UCC supports large scale private gambling (in our RRSPs and our Public Pension Funds), and benefit from through the profits from our investments, and donations from the rich(who make their money from big banks and investments in big compagnies).

Should not the United Church encourage a boycott of all funds from all types of gambling?

Should we be consistant?

Are we notconsistent  because the wealthy (middle class)  members of the church benefit from this type of gambling?

Or have we been tricked into focusing on a small problem by well intentioned people who can not see the forest through the trees?

Small scale problem gamblers and their families being the trees, while the 3 billion people who live and die making less then a  dollar a day under global capitalism being the forest?