Church vs. state on Ocean Grove beach: Date set when judge may cut town's religious power

OCEAN GROVE - The first time Norma Tolliver set foot here 20 years ago, she was so enchanted by the Methodist town that she decided to buy the Main Avenue Galleria and turn it into a showcase for local artists.

Since then, she has watched the secular community co-exist peacefully with the religious community. But tensions started to flare last summer over a long-standing rule by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which effectively governs the town, to keep boardwalk access to the beach closed on Sunday mornings during the summer.

"There should be, and probably is, some good compromise, but we haven't found it yet, and it’s gotten a little ugly," Tolliver said. "Unfortunately, instead of a nice, peaceful sit down, it’s turned into an 'I’m right and you're wrong battle,' and that makes me sad."

Ocean Grove is in the middle of a showdown with New Jersey over its beach-access policy in a fight that has divided the town, the latest battle in a long history that has seen the Methodist group that owns the land clash with secular state government as it seeks to hang on to what it says is its mission: "build and maintain a beautiful seaside community to serve as a place for meditation, reflection and renewal."

Supporters of the limited beach hours say the rule is part of Ocean Grove's quirks that have made the town an attractive place for visitors seeking sanctuary from the stress of modern life. Critics say it is off-putting to residents and visitors who aren't Methodist — and violates the state's beach access rules.

While other moves made by the Camp Meeting Association last year simply irritated its critics, the fight over beach access drew the attention of the state Department of Environmental Protection. It ordered the Camp Meeting Association to open the beach. The association refused and is seeking to overturn the order.

A hearing date for the appeal has been scheduled for April 17, raising the prospects that the issue will be resolved before the beach access closure, and, presumably the protests, are set to begin again Memorial Day weekend.

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As the dispute between Ocean Grove and the state heated up last fall, residents took sides.

Among them were Kevin and Suzanne Ryan, who own Lillagaard Inn Bed and Breakfast and the Quaker Inn. They moved to Ocean Grove from Hoboken in 2004, drawn to the Victorian homes and quaint Main Avenue shopping district that reminded Suzanne of the seaside towns in her home country of England.

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Kevin Ryan isn't Methodist, and he said he disagrees with the Camp Meeting Association on any number of issues. But he said the religious association's rules have helped set Ocean Grove apart from other Shore towns, giving it a peaceful charm that you won't find on, say, summer weekends in Asbury Park, Belmar or Seaside Heights.

What's more: He said he knew the rules when he bought the inns. And he hasn't heard complaints from his guests. If people truly want to go to the beach on a Sunday morning, he said, Bradley Beach is available just a few hundred feet away from Lillagaard.

"It's a quirky town, and you gravitate towards that quirkiness or you won't," Kevin Ryan said. "People who come here and say, 'I'm outraged the beach is closed' — you have choice. This is America. You now can go wherever you want."

Except, that is, from the Ocean Grove boardwalk onto the beach on Sunday mornings during the summer.

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'A way of life'

Ocean Grove has a population of 3,151. All of the land in Ocean Grove is owned by the Camp Meeting Association except for the streets. Many (but not all) homeowners lease the land on which their homes sit. Anyone can live and work in Ocean Grove, no matter their religion.

But the town's religious influence runs deep. The Great Auditorium, hosting worship services and one of the nation's largest organs, is an anchor in town. A tent colony near the auditorium, housing visitors on summer retreats, dates nearly to the town's origin and continues to thrive.

Ocean Grove was founded in 1869 by a group of Methodist clergymen who bought property on the banks of what is now Wesley Lake for $40,000 to create a camp meeting, a Protestant Christian religious service that became popular nationwide following the Civil War.

Besides Ocean Grove, similar camps were founded using similar models, such as Ocean Park, Maine; Merrick on New York's Long Island; and Wesleyan Grove, a 34-acre National Historic Landmark District in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, all attracting congregants to summer campgrounds to pursue spiritual renewal.

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The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association trustees won the right from the state Legislature to govern the community, giving them the authority to adopt and enforce regulations for the health and welfare of the community, subsequent legal decisions noted.

It set the stage for "blue laws" that restricted activities on Sundays such as driving, on-street parking, biking, swimming, sunbathing and selling tobacco. And it left Ocean Grove caught between tradition and progress.

After two separate legal challenges — one by a newspaper delivery driver who wasn't allowed to complete his route on Sundays, another by a man convicted of drunken driving by Ocean Grove authorities — the state Supreme Court in 1979 ruled that the Camp Meeting Association's powers were a violation of the constitutional guarantee of church-state separation.

The court transferred much of Ocean Grove's governance to Neptune Township, while the Camp Meeting Association continued to own the property, including the boardwalk and the beach.

As word of the decision spread through town, residents voiced their displeasure. "It always was so quiet on Sunday," Estella Wegge told the Asbury Park Press. "It was a way of life, and I hate to see it changed."

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Echoes of the past

Some 45 years later, another clash is underway.

Residents last summer said the Camp Meeting Association began rolling out religious imagery with more assertion. The group last summer included an image of a cross on beach badges. And it rebuilt the Ocean Grove pier, destroyed during superstorm Sandy in 2012, in the shape of a cross. The 500-foot pier opened last April, but it has been temporarily closed due to concerns about the safety of its structure.

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Critics said one policy goes too far: The Camp Meeting Association has kept the beach closed from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sundays from Memorial Day to Labor Day, violating the terms of a permit that it received from the Department of Environmental Protection to manage and maintain the beach. Specifically, the permit said the Camp Meeting Association couldn't limit public access to the beach.

Some residents began defying the policy. They gathered on the boardwalk on Sunday mornings, beach chairs in hand, insisting they were not protesting, but merely showing up to enjoy the beach with their friends and family as they were allowed to do under the law. The Camp Meeting Association filed a lawsuit, saying the group was trespassing.

Barbara Burns, a lawyer who has lived in Ocean Grove for 18 years, said she joined the protestors on Sundays last summer, stepping over the rope and walking onto the beach, where they stayed until 12 p.m.

Burns said she has come to value the town's old-fashioned lifestyle created largely by the Camp Meeting Association. But lately, she said, the group has become more aggressive in putting its stamp on the town, and she decided the beach access policy was worth the fight.

"It is a right," Burns said. "And it is an expression of, I guess you could say, dissatisfaction with the fact that the Camp Meeting tries to control so much of what goes on here in town."

In October, with the Camp Meeting Association policy still in force, the DEP issued an order: "Comply with the approved permit and conditions immediately upon receipt of this document. More specifically, immediately cease the use of chain and pad lock barriers which prevents public access to the site’s beach." It threatened a $25,000 fine each day beach access from the boardwalk was closed.

The Camp Meeting Association in November appealed the order and asked for a hearing before a judge. (At the request of the DEP, it agreed to dismiss its complaint against the group that had protested the beach policy.)

In its appeal, the Camp Meeting said the entrances to the beach are closed for just 45 hours a year in a policy that is at the core of its mission. The association spelled out a long list of benefits for the religious and secular alike: It gives people a chance to take a morning stroll on a less crowded boardwalk; it gives lifeguards some much needed rest; it reduces summer traffic into Ocean Grove; and it is an economic driver since visitors might have more time to shop at local businesses.

"It is difficult to imagine a private property owner giving the public broader access to its privately owned land," it said in court documents.

Ocean Grove isn't the only camp meeting to face a challenge. In 2022 on Martha's Vineyard, an organized group of leaseholders at the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs challenged the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association for the first time in decades.

The Camp Meeting has owned and governed the historic enclave since 1868 and those leaseholders wanted a more direct say in regard to how the association governed but were told "the Camp Ground is not a democracy," the Vineyard Gazette reported.

On Main Avenue in Ocean Grove, Tolliver said the Camp Meeting Association's restrictive beach hours help her gallery; since people can't get on the beach Sunday mornings, they visit the local shops. But she could also see how the new cross-shaped pier and cross on the beach badges could touch a nerve with some residents.

If she had an opinion on the issue, she wasn't giving it away.

"I think Ocean Grove will forever be what it was founded to be," she said. "We just all need to figure out how to live comfortably with each other. We've done that successfully ever since I've been here. I haven't seen any erosion of that. This is very recent. And I think salvageable."

Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.

Charles Daye is the metro reporter for Asbury Park and Neptune, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: CDaye@gannettnj.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Ocean Grove beach access decision could curtail town's religious power