NO DICE

THE COFFEE IS BREWED, AND parishioners gather in the meeting hall of the Epworth United Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. On the wall a hand-scrawled poster exhorts: CASINO LOBBYISTS TAKE A HIKE! The tables are strewn with literature on gambling addiction. The T shirts on sale sport the logo NO CASINO and a fiercely clawed Maryland blue crab. As for the evening's featured speaker, "We call him Riverboat Rambo," says Barbara Knickelbein, a grandmotherly church activist, with a mixture of affection and reverence.

To his fan, the Rev. Thomas Grey, 55, an Illinois pastor, is the merry messiah who has built a once lonely battle against a Mississippi riverboat casino into a nationwide crusade against gambling. A Dartmouth graduate and an infantry captain who served in Vietnam, Grey spent 250 nights on the road last year, "networking the fighters--Gideon's army," as he calls it. Whether rattling around the Midwest in his battered Toyota, the Mamas and the Papas playing on his tape deck, or flying on frenetic forays through Maryland, Mississippi, Kansas and Louisiana, he carries everywhere a camouflage-covered Bible. Also in his pocket: a worn copy of the Combat Leader's Field Guide with chapters such as "Ambushes" and "Prisoners of War." Inside the flaps are phone numbers of anticasino agitators in Waterloo, Iowa; Merrillville, Indiana; Pomona, California; Delavan, Wisconsin and beyond. "We're fighting a battle for the soul of America," he says. "Aren't we having fun?"

Only last fall, the Maryland activists quashed casino-company efforts to turn Baltimore into a new Atlantic City, despite $1.3 million in industry campaign contributions to state legislators. But the gambling interests returned, with bills to allow slot machines at racetracks. "We're tightening the perimeter," says Grey, pacing the meeting hall. "If they penetrate the racetracks, the next step is slots in restaurants! Just today I got a call from New Hampshire: the legislature killed two bills to allow slots at dog tracks. Say 'A-men!'"

"A-men!" the audience intones. Since 1988, when Congress opened the way for Indian reservations to set up full-scale gambling, casinos have moved from being the private preserve of two states--Nevada and New Jersey--into the American mainstream. With 126 Native American tribes reaping profits from gaming, commercial companies argued for equal rights. So far, 24 states have legalized casinos, while 37 have embraced lotteries, lured by the prospect of easy money in hard fiscal times. And the games have begun to crossbreed: lottery agencies have added instant-cash video poker and keno games, racetracks have expanded into off-track betting, and grocery shops have installed slot machines. Overall, Americans gambled away more than $40 billion last year--up from $10.4 billion in 1982. On casinos alone, more was spent than on movie tickets, theater, opera and concerts combined.