New Jersey town closes beaches on Sunday mornings all summer to try to get people to go to church.
Quote:Ocean Grove and the state are in a standoff over the resort town’s rules limiting access to the beach on Sunday mornings as the Jersey Shore heads into the unofficial end of the summer on Labor Day weekend.
The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association — the Methodist group that oversees the Ocean Grove section of Neptune in an unusual agreement with the Monmouth County township — does not allow access to the beach from the boardwalk before noon on Sundays.
The tradition stems from Ocean Grove’s origins as a Christian seaside resort. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association officials said limiting beach access on Sunday mornings improves the “religious and secular” quality of life along its boardwalk.
That runs afoul of the state’s Coastal Area Facilities Review Act, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which sent a warning letter to the association Aug. 10 objecting to the use of chain and pad lock barriers barring beach access.
The dispute over Sunday beach access is the latest in a series of controversies involving the Camp Meeting Association and some Ocean Grove residents. Ocean Grove’s decision to rebuild a beach pier in the shape of a cross drew objections from some residents earlier this year.
Some beach-goers have been bypassing the chained entrances and sitting on the beaches Sunday mornings this year. Shane Martins, a founder of the nonpartisan community group Neptune United, said beach-goers arriving before noon on Sundays have been confronted by defenders of the meeting association’s policy.
https://www.nj.com/news/2023/09/jersey-s...ndays.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
