(Atlantic) Churches Are Finally Making the Moral Case Against Sports Betting

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has officially condemned gambling since its earliest years. Throughout the 20th century, prophets and apostles preached against the spiritually corrosive vice, and the Church encouraged members to oppose pro-gambling ballot initiatives. But the last time a senior Church leader addressed gambling at its General Conference—the Church’s semiannual global broadcast and most prominent pulpit—was in 2005. The long silence from the conference pulpit may have allowed some members to convince themselves that the Church had softened its stance—or that their Kalshi habit was not a religious issue at all.

The silence ended this past Saturday, when President D. Todd Christofferson, a senior leader in the Church’s highest governing body, used his General Conference address to condemn gambling. His remarks were well researched: He recited various statistics about the industry’s expansion, and spelled out the ruinous social consequences. He detailed the popular forms of online gambling and even offered a quick survey of the bets you can make on prediction markets—including the timing of the Second Coming. (“Where do you go to collect on that bet?” he wondered.)

But then Christofferson arrived at the real point of his talk.

“For us as Latter-day Saints, overarching all other concerns is the fact that gambling is morally wrong,” he said. “Gambling is built on the desire to obtain something for nothing. Its structure requires that any gain comes at others’ expense. It’s hard to reconcile that with the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.” He went on to say that Christians should be wise stewards of their God-given resources, and that “gambling produces nothing of value and enriches only its purveyors.”

He also addressed those in his audience who believe that they can gamble casually without becoming addicted. “Since your recreational gambling may lead a weaker brother or sister into temptation, just don’t do it,” Christofferson said. “Every soul is precious.”

Read it all.

This past weekend, senior Latter-day Saint leader @ChristoffDTodd did something that has become surprisingly rare: He made an unapologetic moral argument against gambling.I wrote about the religious leaders pushing back against the sports-betting boom. https://t.co/0FeDCYVV07

— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) October 6, 2026