Church rep wants special treatment (2024)

OCEAN CITY — God ought to outrank a hula-hooper, at least as far as Steve Bassett is concerned.

Bassett, of Somers Point, and other members of Praise Tabernacle Church in Egg Harbor Township distribute flyers and witness to passers-by Monday nights on the Boardwalk, applying for a spot through the city’s Boardwalk entertainers program.

The city began the program in 2017 to regulate an increasing number of buskers playing music and offering other performances for tips.

Last winter, the city enacted new limits on where and when people can perform and increased the permit fee to $200.

Performers are not guaranteed one of the limited spots. That means Bassett and his group have the same chance as the keyboardists, guitar players and flutists who want their slot on the boards. He’s not happy about that, and he let City Council know.

“We talk about Jesus. People get saved. And we’re being treated like all of the other entertainers. There’s a girl who hula hoops and she’s being treated the same as we are with a church,” Bassett told council on Thursday. “I think we should get special treatment.”

That may not be possible, city attorney Dottie McCrosson said after the meeting.

A government can limit the how and where of speech, she said, for instance by banning amplification or setting aside a specific space for protests.

But under the Constitution, the city cannot regulate what is said.

“So we can regulate how the message is presented, but not what the method is. Content neutral is what the lawyers call it,” McCrosson said.

That means if the city allows a message from St. Peter’s United Methodist Church, the same space and method must also be available to the Unification Church or the Church of Satan.

Allowing an LGBTQ pride march on the Boardwalk means the city would legally have to provide the same accommodation to the Ku Klux Klan.

The principle has played out repeatedly on the Ocean City Boardwalk, along the causeway connecting the city to Somers Point, in city parks and in communities throughout the region, where recent years have seen pride events, gun control and Black Lives Matter protests, groups advocating for parental rights, against abortion, for prayer and against proposed offshore windmills.

There are other pragmatic concerns as well, McCrosson said. If there were one group seeking to evangelize or proselytize on the Boardwalk, there might be some way to make arrangements. But if there are eight or 12 different church organizations, that would begin to crowd out the performers, who were the reason the city adopted the program to begin with.

“Then the Boardwalk entertainers program is no longer the Boardwalk entertainers program,” she said.

The question of who can perform on the Boardwalk and where has been complicated, with the city weighing its options for years before adopting an ordinance. Some visitors, and some officials, have complained about the quality of some of the performers, and the impact of their presence on the atmosphere of the Boardwalk.

McCrosson said one of the motivations for the entertainers program was to keep pedestrian traffic flowing on the densely crowded Boardwalk on summer nights.

Religious speech can draw a crowd the same as music or other performances, she said, especially if one person has a permit for a Boardwalk spot and is joined by several other church members.

No one on council said whether they would address Bassett’s concerns. At the meeting, he said he has people who want to hear more about Jesus but cannot find him on the Boardwalk.

“I can’t tell them where to go in Ocean City when we’re there Monday nights because I never know where we’re going to be,” he said.

After the meeting, Bassett said this is his first year handing out pamphlets on the Boardwalk. He sees it as important work.

“We saved about 15 people so far,” he said. “One of them was a Catholic.”

He said Ocean City is a Christian town, one that should support the church.

“God is not going to like that,” he said.

Ocean City was founded by Methodist ministers as a religious retreat, a history that remains visible throughout town, from a ban on alcohol in restaurants to streets named after theologians like John Wesley and Francis Asbury.

City meetings begin with a prayer or at least a moment of silence, along with the Pledge of Allegiance.

But a New Jersey city, or any American level of government, cannot be specifically Christian or not Christian because of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, stating that government cannot establish a religion.

The same amendment allows a wide variety of religious expression, including on the Boardwalk. Campus Crusade, now called just “Cru,” has run a summer mission in Ocean City since 1967, and this year, young people continue outreach efforts on the Boardwalk.

There have been multiple other instances of religious messages on the Boardwalk, including church services on Sunday mornings in the summer. In the 1980s, some in the city expressed deep concern over Boardwalk outreach efforts from the Unification Church, often derisively referred to as the Moonies.

It was one of two thorny Constitutional issues raised at a relatively brief meeting, with the city also discussing and rejecting the idea of banning the wearing of masks on the Boardwalk.