For the first time in generations, beachgoers were out on the sand in a New Jersey shore community on the Sunday morning before Memorial Day as a Christian religious group fights the state over its regular beach closures there during Sunday services.
The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist group that established a Christian seaside retreat at the Jersey Shore in 1869, said it had closed its beaches on Sunday mornings during religious services in Ocean Grove for more than a century and a half before the state Department of Environmental Protection accused the group of violating state beach access laws.
