A senior leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warned on Saturday that an explosion of gambling — driven by online prediction markets and sports betting — is fostering greed, particularly among young people, while producing “nothing of value.”

D. Todd Christofferson, one of the top three leaders of what is widely known as the Mormon church, said rampant betting among teenagers and young adults is taking time away from their studies and relationships as smartphones make wagering possible anywhere.

“For us as Latter-day Saints, overarching all other concerns is the fact that gambling is morally wrong. Gambling is built on the desire to obtain something for nothing,” Christofferson said at the faith’s twice-annual general conference.

His declaration that prediction markets amount to gambling places the conservative church at odds with President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has argued that platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket do not constitute gambling and therefore should not be subject to restrictions in states such as Utah, where the church is based. The stakes of that disagreement are practical: if prediction markets are treated as finance rather than gambling, state-level gambling restrictions like Utah’s would not apply to them.

Utah has been at the forefront of the legal dispute over who regulates the markets and whether they should be treated as finance or gambling. In August, a federal judge ruled that Utah officials can enforce the state’s strict anti-gambling laws against prediction markets. Legislation enacted this year further tightened Utah’s gambling laws and amended some of the language so that it would almost certainly apply to prediction markets. How state officials put those tools to use against specific platforms — and how the platforms respond — remains an open question in the dispute.

Prediction markets allow wagers on nearly anything, from whether it will rain in Los Angeles to whether the United States will go to war.

“Or even, if you can imagine, the timing of the Second Coming,” Christofferson said on Saturday. “Where do you go to collect on that bet?”

Opposition to gambling is common among religious organizations. The United Methodist Church refers to it as “a menace to society.” The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, has condemned gambling on several occasions and in 2025 declared sports gambling inconsistent with biblical principle. Gambling is forbidden in Islam and is considered a vice among Hindus. In the Catholic Church, gambling is not in itself a sin but is viewed potentially problematic.

For more than a century, Utah has kept gambling almost entirely out of the state. There are no casinos, no lotteries and no racetracks that accept bets. The prohibition is rooted in the ideals of Latter-day Saints members, who view gambling as a path to selfishness and addiction — ideals that underpin the state’s stance in the current legal dispute over prediction markets.

“The rise of predictive markets, and the legalization of sports gambling, this is just really taking off all across the country,” said Matthew Bowman, a professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University in California. “And a lot of institutions — religious, state and otherwise — are grappling with this problem.”

Saturday’s speech comes as the church has been wading into political issues under President Dallin Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice who became the faith’s top leader last October. Church leaders this year have opposed state ballot measures that would establish abortion rights in Idaho and Nevada.

The institution’s approach to political issues — using public statements and behind-the-scenes lobbying to convey its message — has become more calculated in recent years, Bowman said. The shift followed public backlash to the church’s stance against California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex marriage. In that case, Bowman said, church leaders encouraged members to get directly involved. Whether the church’s engagement extends further into the gambling debate remains to be seen as the legal dispute over prediction markets plays out.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.