DATELINE–Nashville, Tenn.

“Gambling is by definition the attempt to profit without labor.”

Thus begins a typical sermon by The Rev. Will B. DeVine, dean of the Nashville, Tenn.-based Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Junior College. Billy Bob, as the Rev. DeVine is known to the eighty or so members of his congregation, is a dapper ex-Navy man with a history of proselytizing that reads like a roll call of every major city in the American South.

But these days, Rev. DeVine’s sermon is being heard by more than just his parishioners or even just in the South. The fiery DeVine is now spearheading “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows,” a campaign to bring his anti-gambling crusade to America’s economic capital: New York City.

“Investing in the stock market is also, by definition, an attempt to profit without labor,” DeVine’s sermon continues, “We learn in Genesis that Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden and commanded by God to eat and profit by the sweat of his own brow. The Lord made no exception for those of us who eat and profit by the cold, clean hum of computerized stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange is a house of sin.”

With the Dow Jones index cresting at record highs this week and conservative celebrities like Rush Limbaugh hawking “Christian activist” investment funds, DeVine’s “Sweat of Our Brows” anti-stock market crusade promotes a message which seems far out even to the far right.

DeVine’s radio and television spots has already proven too trying for Ralph Reedes, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, the evangelical Political Action Committee (PAC) which enjoyed a favorable audience in the White House during the Reagan era.

Reedes has publicly dismissed DeVine’s contention that speculation in the stock market is considered a sin by the Bible and on occasion has called DeVine’s sermons “ridiculous” and “heresy.” In a press conference delivered from the Christian Television Network’s “500 Club” studios, Reedes repudiated DeVine’s anti-gambling message by citing the needs of his own religious values movement: “Jesus wants his people to have a strong economic base. The Pro-Family Values movement must not oppose reputable financial practices that grant us the urgently needed means to support our first, second and third families.”

DeVine and his growing cadre of followers remain undaunted despite the continuing protests of the official Moral Majority. While on a recent tour of the NYSE, DeVine commented that Jesus was a rebel Jew who was also unpopular with both the governmental and religious establishment of his time. As his face reddened with passion, DeVine burst into the following screed: “If Ralph Reedes was there when Jesus was hanging on the Cross and soldiers were casting lots for His clothing, would he be shouting ‘Come on seven, Daddy needs a new pair of sandals?’ I ask you, as Our Beloved Savior was being crucified on Calvary, would Ralph Reedes get his broker on the cell-phone and start demanding, ‘Dump all of my blue chip holdings and roll everything I’ve got into that new company that mass produces crucifixes?’

Financial analysts who track the burgeoning religion industry suggest that DeVine’s crusade is not a wholly unexpected development. As more and more middle-income individuals are lured into stock market speculation by “Wal-Mart"-like trading houses and America’s online investment schemes, the social costs of investment are becoming apparent to a segment erstwhile excluded from this “game of princes". The non-profit organization Gambler’s Anonymous has begun stock market-specific programs in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Oklahoma. The organization believes a national caucus is necessary to stave off the epidemic of market gambling that has recently spread to the working class and is calling on the president to take a public stand on the issue.

The wife of one such “stock market junkie” recently appeared on the cable financial news network CNBCNNFN to share her tragic story with the gambling community. The mild-mannered housewife from Mississippi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was seen only in disguise, stated that at first she thought her husband’s interest in the market were harmless, only to realize the ill that had befallen her family when “it was too late.”

“It all started with the Netscape IPO,” she blurted as her tears began to flow, “He became obsessed with hitting the big jackpot and started to bet money on a few more computer stocks here and there. Little by little he was spending more time at the self-service brokerage and less and less time at home. But I supported him in the beginning. Technology stocks, they…well, they’re just a ‘gateway’ investment, you know, like they talk about that marijuana. Pretty soon he started hitting the hard stuff, the junk bonds, futures trading. I’m frightened now for my family’s financial and emotional safety. It’s like I don’t even know my own husband anymore.”

The executive counsel of DeVine’s “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” contend this woman’s story is just one of thousands of similar tragedies occurring throughout America. Their literature chronicles the rise of consumer-level stock deals and points to a concurrent increase in organized crime.

“As with casino-style gambling,” begins one of their latest news releases, “Mafia involvement, political corruption, and a de facto regressive tax structure will follow this popular obsession with small-time investment gambling. As the Senate threatens to cut down the Capital Gains Tax, even greater incentives will await gamblers who chase the so-called American and certainly un-Christian dream of an unearned income.”

Rev. DeVine’s crusade has called for federal legislation that would outlaw the individual ownership, in whole or part, of companies for which an investor does not work. The Justice Department has not yet issued an official response to DeVine’s inquest.

Despite the sudden fame that has visited their spiritual leader, the congregation of Billy Bob’s Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Jr. College exhibits a steadfast commitment to the religious underpinnings of their campaign.

It is not difficult to understand why. DeVine’s rhetorical style is point-blank and deadly accurate. The former Navy seal does not rely upon the typical flourishes of Southern preachers who came before him. Instead, the earnest Billy Bob chooses to pitch his vision in terms that are all-too-familiar to today’s families.

As his “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” campaign made a stop in the predominantly African-American and Central American District of Columbia, DeVine closed his homily with this benediction, as political as it is spiritual:

Gambling, whether based upon a spike in the Dow Jones or a roll of the dice is not a victimless crime. Both the Church and the State are bound by covenant to protect our members and citizens from harm, even if that harmful threat comes from within. From this day forward let your so-called ‘disposable’ income be granted to the church or re-invested in your local communities. Do not allow your hard-earned money to be expatriated to godless and nationless companies.

As it is written in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 13, Verse 11: ‘Wealth gotten by vanity be diminished, but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.’ Go forth from this place and increase not the wealth of the rich, but the wealth that enriches your life.