For 150 years a beach in New Jersey, owned by Christian group Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, was closed on summer Sunday mornings.
But last year the state refused to recognise its right to close the beach then, saying it would be fined up to $25,000 a day if it did not keep it open all week long, according to a report in The Times.
So the Association responded by holding an open air service on the beach and 500 people heard Pastor Joe Tiedemann’s seaside sermon. For the first time, his boardwalk pavilion looked out not onto empty sands but to crowds of sun umbrellas and bikini-clad bathers. Asked whether it changed his message, Tiedemann replied: ‘We’re just happy that people can be in the presence of the Lord.’
Since 1870, when the Association bought the one-square-mile plot, access to the beach in Ocean Grove has been blocked between 9am and noon for the 15 summer weeks between this weekend’s Memorial Day holiday and September. But in 2023 some residents began protesting against the closure, arguing that the Association could not impose its beliefs on the whole town.
Ocean Grove has some other quaint rules. The sale of alcohol is banned year-round and playing music on the beach is forbidden, as is flying kites and ‘disrobing or changing clothes’. To the disappointment of the bucket-and-spade crowd, the town also bans ‘digging holes in sand deeper than the knees of the smallest participant’.
Frank Kirkstad, a 78-year-old local Christian, said: ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t understand why they felt the need to change this, when there are so many other beaches you can go to.’
