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BY ROY ADAMS
 am lonely no longer," he said to them. "I am proud. I am proud. I am proud of all these folks who came out to testify."*
 For a full three months this past spring and winter, the Maryland
General Assembly struggled with the contentious issue of slots. The plan of
gambling proponents, with the state governor in the (crusading) lead, is to
bring 15,500 slot machines to three Maryland racetracks and three nontrack locations,
with the idea of using the revenue thus generated to solve the state's fiscal
problems.
As the debate raged in Annapolis, Maryland's capital, hundreds
of area pastors and members of their churches descended on the legislature to
voice their opposition to the proposed measure, and the exuberance recorded
at the top of this editorial came from one overjoyed member of the state's Ways
and Means Committee for the support. It was a reminder to me that these elected
officials are human too. Often they want to do the right thing but are paralyzed
by a feeling of loneliness and isolation, wondering if decent people care anymore.
So as I read about the action of these churches and their ministers,
one question haunted me: Are Adventists also being heard from on this issue?
Maryland is the home of a slew of Adventist entities, including
the General Conference, the North American Division, the Columbia Union, and
the Chesapeake Conference. In addition, Maryland boasts hundreds of Adventist
churches, with thousands upon thousands of qualified voters.
With our strong aversion to gambling, and given the natural
sensitivity of elected officials to public opinion, it would seem, on the face
of it, that Maryland would be one of the last places in the United States for
a governor to even think of introducing legalized gambling as a way of fixing
the budget. Yet this whole matter proceeds, I suspect, as though Adventists
did not exist. By and large, we've been programmed to be nonactivist and quiescent.
 One lady I know says: "What I do with my free time is
none of the church's business." I wouldn't put it that way myself, but
I know what she means. Adventists, while totally loyal to their church, should
also consider themselves members of the general society, with responsibilities
to it. And the fact of the matter is that the church does not claim jurisdiction
over the political or community activities of its members. It's not the job
of the church, for example, to tell members how to vote, which party to support,
or how to respond to the issues of the day.
The task of the church, rather, is to provide broad guidance
in the areas of ethics and morals, so that its members, thus equipped, may carry
out in their private lives in community the unchanging principles of the gospel.
Our aim is never to convert society into the kingdom of God on earth--that's
wishful thinking. But there is a sense in which every Christian wants the will
of God to be done on earth as in heaven--we get that from Jesus Himself. So
when I called my congressperson about the slots issue, it was against a picture
in my mind of poor, destitute families, encouraged by their own government,
gambling away the little they have in the vain hope of getting rich quick; against
a picture in my mind of broken homes, broken lives, bankrupt families, suicides.
As individual Adventists, we have a responsibility to
voice our concerns. Nothing in your Church Manual forbids that. Nothing
in the Bible proscribes it. And for those who would throw at me--again--Ellen
G. White's statement in The Desire of Ages, page 509, please be assured
that I'm familiar with it, and have already interpreted it against the background
of her own life. She, an activist in the Temperance Movement of her day, is
the one who counseled Adventists to disobey the fugitive slave laws of the United
States designed to capture and return runaway slaves; and she was the one who
counseled that we should even vote on Sabbath, if necessary, to bring down anti-temperance
candidates.
For us in Maryland, it's the slots issue at the moment. What
is it where you are? And how are you responding? Look at it this way: We may
not always succeed in stopping evil from coming to our communities, but we'd
be derelict in our Christian responsibility if we don't even try.
_________________________
*"Hundreds Testify Against Slots," the (Largo/Lanham) Gazette,
March 25, 2004, p. 1.
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