Longtime spouses Paul Martin and Aliza Greenblatt are excited to spend their 20th summer in Ocean Grove. They’re really looking forward to warm days, walking on the boardwalk hand in hand and taking a dip together in the ocean.
“What we’re not looking forward to,” Paul says sternly, as we spoke over a cup of tea in the living room of their Victorian home in early May, “is having to carry a beach badge with a cross on it.” He and Aliza are Jewish and say “having to wear a cross is a painful reminder of all the suffering Jews have gone through.”
But in Ocean Grove, a half-square mile Christian seaside resort that since its 1869 founding by Methodist clergymen has been controlled by the Camp Meeting Association, they don’t have much of a choice.
The Camp Meeting’s unique stronghold over this slice of Neptune Township — including the beachfront and all the property on which the nearly 1,800 homes sit — is what gives the organization the power to boldly display its religious symbolism throughout town. It’s evident in everything from the rock speakers that play sermons outside on Sundays, to its new $2 million cross-shaped pier, to the longstanding, and possibly illegal, practice of prohibiting beach access until noon on Sundays when church lets out.
For a long time, the nearly 3,000 residents of “God’s Square Mile” – people of different faiths, including families who’ve been living there for generations, newcomers, and in the past 25 years, a burgeoning LGBTQ+ community — have lived as friends and neighbors, harmoniously, welcoming thousands of visitors each summer to their haven by the sea.
They tell me life in the quaint community, known for its picturesque Victorian houses, seasonal vacation tents, and charming town center lined with ice cream parlors and gift shops, is mostly just as you’d imagine it to be – wonderful.
But its 150 years of history haven’t been without conflict. And that power struggle — often one that challenges some of our core constitutional rights — has led to heated court battles that have gradually stripped away some of the Camp Meeting’s official powers.
Now, tensions are again rising. I spoke to dozens of residents who say the Camp Meeting has become more zealous in its display of its religious beliefs, the open dialogue they once had with its leaders has broken down, and the message they’re getting is: If you don’t like it, you can live or spend your summers somewhere else.
Camp Meeting Association President Michael Badger told me the group “loves, accepts and welcomes all.” But their actions say otherwise.
“It just seems that over the last few years, the Camp Meeting Association has gotten more aggressive in their expression of their Christianity,” said Luisa Paster. “And I think that mirrors what’s been happening in the rest of the country.”
She and her wife Harriet Bernstein were at the center of one of those legal battles with the Camp Meeting in 2007 when they were denied the right to celebrate their civil union at the boardwalk pavilion. In the end, the Camp Meeting lost in court but opted to ban all marriages at the beachfront location. How’s that for acceptance?
The Camp Meeting has the right to freely practice its religion but it does not have the right and shouldn’t have the power to impose it on others.
“But if no one challenges them, then that’s exactly what happens,” Bruce Afran, a civil rights and constitutional lawyer, who teaches First Amendment law at Rutgers University, told me. He asked me to think of all the times the Camp Meeting had been challenged in court. “Usually,” he says, “they lose.”
With the beach badges and with “this rule of not opening the beach until noon on Sundays,” he says, “there’s a host of people who have valid reasons to [legally] challenge this.”
And I think they should. It’s how change here has always come in the past. And shamefully, the only way it’s likely to now.
Badge of dishonor
It’s a small piece of plastic, not much larger than a quarter. But the symbolism is enormous. The steeple of the Great Auditorium, Ocean Grove’s 6,000-seat theater where crowds come to worship each Sunday, is pictured on this season’s beach badge with a cross in the middle and a wave at the bottom. It’s the logo of the Camp Meeting Association.
And for $95, it’s what any seasonal badge owner will have to have with them when they step foot on the beach this summer. Despite attempts from the township to ask the Camp Meeting to offer an alternative, they refused, Neptune Township business administrator Gina LaPlaca told me. And when asked about the legality of not opening the beach until noon, she said the township had no further comment.
“We just don’t have the authority to tell the Camp Meeting what they can or can’t put on the badges,” said LaPlaca.
And therein lies the problem. Neptune Township can’t tell the Camp Meeting to do much of anything.
Years ago, the Camp Meeting had even more power. It was even once its own municipality but the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the 1920s, and in the 1970s, stripped them of their municipal court and police force, declaring that there was no separation of church and state.
Still, that hasn’t stopped the group from creating rules and making decisions that impose their religious beliefs on others. The cross-shaped pier, the badges and restricting beach access on Sundays are just some examples. They even told a secular yoga teacher I spoke to that if he wanted to hold a class on the boardwalk, he’d have to lead it by praising Jesus.
“There’s just a very long and complicated history there that we all try to navigate as carefully as we can,” LaPlaca said.
That’s no doubt because of all the Camp Meeting does for the town that would normally be paid for through taxes. It fundraised and paid for the new $2 million pier. It provides year-round recreational programs and events. It’s also in charge of collecting the beach badge revenue — money it’s required to spend on maintaining the beach — and a nominal annual fee homeowners must pay to lease the land.
“We’re not seeking to blur the line of separation of church and state, we’re not seeking to do the role of government,” Badger told me as we discussed the cross-shaped pier the Camp Meeting didn’t need township approval to build. “…all we’re seeking is to be authentically who we are as Christians, to live our faith expressively in public and to use our lands for the purposes for which we’ve been granted and established.”
Ah, but the lines are blurred and they’ve been crossed, time and again. And no one – not a single person I spoke with – is suggesting they shouldn’t be who they are and embrace their history and religion. All that’s being asked of them, all that people are pleading for, desperately, is that they also give other people the breadth to be who they are. But it seems to me that what the Camp Meeting says is all just lip service. I’d much prefer to see them show tolerance instead of just talking about it.
Pushing back against Pride
On the grandiose porches of the cotton candy-colored homes with manicured lawns, American flags flutter in the breeze in the spring air. Hanging just as proudly on others are much more colorful ones – rainbow Pride flags of the LGBTQ+ community.
I met longtime resident Alan Woodruff for lunch at a sandwich shop near Main Avenue on a warm day in May. “A lot has changed in the 25 years since I moved here,” he said as he took a sip of his lemonade.
Alan, who lives with his partner, owns a beautiful, three-story Victorian-style home on Olin Street and another equally gorgeous home right next to it that he rents out every summer. But don’t be fooled, he says, “these homes weren’t always this appealing …when I bought them, it was a teardown situation with no heat, no plumbing.”
When he arrived in Ocean Grove from Long Island more than two decades ago, the town was a shadow of what it is today — an aging Camp membership and rundown houses, many of which were converted to single rooms for the mentally ill. Not an ideal place for families, Alan recalled.
But he saw “unbridled potential” just steps from the beach. Many others saw the same thing and bought homes there, too. On his street, he tells me, there are 16 homes – “and 8 of them are gay households.”
“I think at that time, when gay people started to move here, we were all very welcome,” he says. Back then, he said, it felt like the Camp Meeting Association “was a gracious neighbor or landlord and like we were rebuilding the community together.”
He tells me what he thinks is happening now as more overt signs of the Camp Meeting’s faith are displayed around town.
“They’ve started to try to reassert themselves, kind of like ‘Hey, remember, it’s our town,’” he said. The cross-shaped pier, he noted, doesn’t bother him. He compared it to if a church put up a nativity scene on the lawn at Christmas. He said it doesn’t feel less welcoming, but it certainly looks that way.
“I mean it’s sort of what we signed up for when we came here, we knew we were going to see those kinds of things in town,” he said.
But what does bother him, he said, is the beach badges. That’s a religious symbol on his person. That’s pushing an agenda. That’s infringing on his freedom from religion.
A New Beginning
As I walk onto the pier, other visitors stroll beside me, past the dozens of benches, taking in the view and catching the light, cool sea breeze. From the water, it doesn’t look much different than any other pier and it’s an improvement compared to what was left of the last one destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. But from above its cross shape is undeniable — a flex of the group’s authority. They can, so they did.
WATCH: See the cross-shaped pier from above
But how far is too far? And where is the line? Shane Martins, an attorney who bought a home in Ocean Grove with his partner three years ago, thinks the Camp Meeting has already crossed it.
He founded the community advocacy organization Neptune United and says the influx of religious symbols in the area, including the new pier, makes him and many others feel wary and unwelcome.
Shane told me that on a recent Sunday, “with my neighbors watching from their porch,” a group of teens walking by ripped the Pride flag right off his home.
On an afternoon visit to his home in late April, he told me he’s extensively researched the Camp Meeting’s ties to Christian nationalism, a term used to describe efforts to put Christian symbols and practices into public spaces, and pointed to the organization’s past and current involvement with far-right personalities and groups who are known to be hateful of the LGBTQ+ community.
I spoke to Michael Badger at length about Shane’s concerns as well as the concerns of so many of the other residents I interviewed. He told me much of what I figured he’d say – that in Ocean Grove “all are welcome,” that as a group, the Camp Meeting has never meant any harm to anyone.”
He also told me he believes “government elimination of religious symbols from privately owned property threatens the rights of people of faith.”
And refuted the notion that the Camp Meeting has ties to Christian nationalists or is being “more overtly Christian” than in the past. He spoke matter-of-factly about traditions dating back decades like the quiet Sundays when cars were kept from entering Ocean Grove in honor of observing the Sabbath.
What he didn’t mention is that that law was overturned by the Supreme Court because it flew in the face of the First and 14th Amendments. A newspaper delivery driver who was impeded from distributing the paper sued the Camp Meeting.
And that’s how most changes happen here, through litigation. I wonder if that’s what it’ll come down to with the beach badges, too.
“It’s not only freedom of religion, it’s freedom from religion, you know,” said Paul, who is a member of Neptune United. And it’s something they intend to fight. But a lawsuit, he said, could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars — and time.
But they could have a case. Liza Weisberg, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, agrees that “requiring beachgoers to wear a religious symbol in order to access land dedicated to public recreation” is troubling and raises serious legal concerns.
“At a minimum, this requirement functions as a ‘do not enter’ sign for individuals whose faith practices do not allow them to display certain religious iconography,” she said.
But, that’s how it’s always been, Badger contends. Since the time beach badges first started to have pictures on them in 1994, Badger tells me, they’ve featured both religious images and more fitting beach themes like waves and sandcastles.
“So, the narrative that all this is new,” he said. “It’s certainly not. It’s not new. It’s from the beginning.”
Those words stayed with me: “It’s not new. It’s from the beginning.” But the fact that something’s always been done, that it’s always been the way it is, is it really enough to make it right? And does it make it right if you know that what’s “been from the beginning” stands to hurt those you claim to love and accept? If the answer is no then maybe it’s time for a new beginning.
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