A small crowd of OGU supporters gather by the Beersheba Well. Blogfinger photo 8/16/15 © click to make the small crowd bigger.
The shirt says, ” Support Garden State Equality.” The sign says, “Thank you Rev. Dr. Campolo.” Blogfinger photo 8/16/15. Police stand by in case someone wants to burn their Medicare cards.
Sunday, August 16, 2015, Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger, reporting live from the Great Auditorium.
Today was the day that Ocean Grove United called for a demonstration outside the GA prior to the weekly Sunday morning service.
Each week there is a different guest speaker, and today it was Tony Campolo, a well-known Baptist pastor. OGU previously announced that they wanted to welcome him. Couldn’t they just have sent him an email or a nice note?
OGU assembled a lively group of supporters, about 30 of them, in Auditorium Square Park, outside the GA, starting at 9:30 am. They spoke among themselves, but their body language indicated that they did not want to interact with others.
Many in the group were wearing matching blue T shirts with a slogan that said “Support Garden State Equality.” GSE is the state-wide gay advocacy group that showed up in the Grove at the time of the Pavilion problem and during the demonstration against Kirk Cameron.
I was there with my camera and my NJ Press Pass around my neck. I approached a small knot of demonstrators. One of them was a senior member of OGU who lives in OG (let’s call her S.–for silent) She refused to talk to me. Standing next to her was a young woman wearing one of those blue shirts clearly identifying her as a member of the demonstrators.
I asked her why she was there today. She began to speak, but S. demanded that she stop talking to me. The young woman was intimidated and she said, “I guess I can’t say anything.”
Then I approached Luisa Paster, Co-Chair of OGU. She would not say a single word to me—not even hello. She kept her lips tightly sealed as she looked at me. “So I guess you aren’t speaking to me?” said I. She shook her head to indicate “No,”
I told her that it was a shame. I wanted to ask her to tell us exactly what OGU wants in this town. Why have a demonstration if you won’t say what the message is?
Someone who did speak to me was Jen Giordano, at her table, promoting “Urban Promise” a Christian group that had been founded by Tony Campolo. She said that she was well aware of the issues between the CMA and OGU. Her reaction was , “God loves everyone.” But she followed up by saying, “Tolerance goes both ways.”
Jen Giordano of Urban Promise. Blogfinger photo. © 8/16/15
Another person who tried to speak to the OGU demonstrators was Colleen Batchelder, an outgoing, cheerful woman who came today from Barnegat with her dad to hear this speaker. She is the founder of “Recklessly Abandoned Ministries Inc.” I was standing there when she approached a group of OGUniks. She asked them what the demonstration was about. No one would speak to her. The same OGU member (S for silent) who turned me down, turned Colleen down as well. But Colleen is a determined person, and she asked S. to say something because she likes to “hear all sides.” No answer. Then she asked S. if she could pray for her. “What would you like me to pray for?” Colleen asked.
S. said nothing, but Colleen is persuasive, so S. said “Pray for world peace.”
Two out-of-towners tried to speak to the OGUniks, but silence was the answer. © 8/16/15 Blogfinger photo.
After that Colleen and I spoke to each other. She said that we all should see each other not as groups but as individuals. She said that all should be welcomed in the church.
You would think these OGUniks would like to explain to the people of Ocean Grove what they are about. But evidently they are so embarrassed by their message that they would prefer we all guess what they are thinking. Ironically they are a group which says they are about “neighborliness, inclusiveness, and mutual respect.” (from their web site) Really?
Of course, no one is required to talk to Blogfinger, but stifling the speech of that young lady is another matter altogether.
Ocean Grove United has a history of trying to stiff-arm speech in the Great Auditorium. They have tried, but not succeeded, in intimidating the CMA into applying a gay litmus test to all speakers who are being considered for summer Sunday services in the GA.
How ironic it is that a group that claims to be about equality and freedom would violate somebody else’s right to speak.
As for Blogfinger, I am not surprised by their behavior, because they have shown hostility towards us before. But yesterday we had 1,800 visits to our site and we will probably have higher numbers today. We never get any commenters who identify themselves as being members of OGU, but that’s their loss. Their behavior seems childish.
And anytime someone Googles OGU, they will find our articles, but they won’t find OGU’s message as offered by themselves on our site because they are also silent on the BF site where their voice could be heard by many readers: www.blogfinger.net. (At the top of our home page is a search block where you can research our coverage of OGU-related issues in Ocean Grove.)
Golly….OGU really needs a PR person, because their recent activities, like bailing out on the Cupola dedication, have drawn predominantly negative reviews in the Blogfinger comments section.
Oh, by the way, Tony Campolo gave a fine and inspired sermon today to about 3,000 avid followers, but OGU’s favorite topic never came up. He did, however, remind the congregation that, “This is a Methodist place.”
About 3,000 people attended the Sunday service today to hear Tony Campolo. © Click to enlarge. Paul Goldfinger photo.
JANE MONHEIT with some good advice:
Magoo: If you were an organization would you really not talk to someone if they disagreed with your policies? Are you so thin skinned? Blogfinger did not criticize anybody personally. We posted OGU’s own public announcements and we described their behavior exactly as it occurred on Sunday. In fact we rarely identify anyone by name, unless they have been quoted, and even you get to criticize us without identifying yourself.
If the OGU takes a public stance by demonstrating outside the Great Auditorium, or by writing irate letters to the Coaster, or by announcing to the world that they would boycott the Cupola ceremony, then they cannot expect to avoid criticism. We would not be writing articles about their behavior if it weren’t for their public pronouncements on these issues.
To carry your idea to the extreme, there would be a lot of silent people around, and our our society would be the worse for it. Imagine if the “silent treatment” were used in our political processes.
And by the way, Blogfinger has had quite a few articles with favorable opinions about OGU. Our coverage of them going back to 2007 has been totally fair and, in fact, often sympathetic.
Finally, about free speech, you got it wrong. My reference to “stifling free speech” was about the young lady who was not permitted to speak to us; it was not about any other speech at that event, in fact I made it quite clear that OGU had every right not to talk to us.
—-Paul @Blogfinger
OGU responded, but not the way the Editor wanted. Your headline is completely false. OGU didn’t stifle free speech; they chose not to talk to you – In an earlier article this month, the Editor criticized OGU for not participating in the Together Campaign dedication ceremony, although they publicly stated the reasons why they chose to not come. To think a person or group will welcome you with a smile and open arms after you write a negative editorial about them not only once, but twice… . What do you expect Mr. Blogfinger? My goodness, I wouldn’t talk to you either if you treated me that way!
That’s why Blogfinger is a better read than the Times.
This editorial has, after several readings, compelled me to offer the following thoughts. The piece is, at best, the Editor’s truth, a conceptual interpretation of his experience.
Yes, we all do this. Maybe if we could we step away from our discursiveness into silence, we could more clearly interpret events and feelings.
OGU is responding, but not the way the Editor wants. Might we go below the chatter and feel the tenderness here? We can all find some clarity in silence, if we provide the space for it to arise.
Fat Al: I do sometimes edit comments, but usually it is for grammar, spelling, etc. Other times it is because someone has violated our rules (see the tab above) such as wildly changing the subject, name calling, incoherence, nastiness, etc.
Your last paragraph was not deleted because we want to deprive anyone of the chance to debate ideas. If you failed to get an important point across, then feel free to re-word it and re-submit it.
All newspapers edit letters to the editor and they also fail to print most letters that they receive. I try to emulate the NY Times that way, although I do post over 90% of the comments that are sent to Blogfinger. And you will never see the “gray lady” notate when they edit anything that they print, and you know they have many editors over there. Also you may have noticed that the Times never allows their readers to criticize their journalism on their pages.—Paul
Thank you Sue for that accurate and brief summary. It is fine if readers want to relate something that was said in Rev. Campolo’s sermon, but we cannot allow long and detailed theologic expositions. I am allowing some limited theology to enter the discussion, but only because one of the two participants in this controversy is basing its views on the Bible.
That’s fine. It’s called a debate. It’s robust, and it makes people angry and upset, and think about what they stand for, and what is important to them. It is what free societies are built on, and the ability to have these kinds of heated and emotional debates without killing each other is one of the things that makes this country great (recognizing that we sometimes fail to live up to this goal).
And yes, I’m trained in constitutional law.
(It would also be helpful and appreciated if you would note when you have edited a comment. There were some things in my submitted comment that were important to my point.)
Al
My take away from the sermon that most people these days are very judgemental that it is God’s job, not ours, to judge people and our job to love everyone as they are.
His closing story was about a patient who was dying of AIDS in a hospital, and the chaplain, arriving for last rites, would not enter the room and shouted condemning words from the doorway. Afterwards a nurse sat with the patient holding his hand saying he was loved until he passed. Dr Campola noted we should all act like the nurse.
Fat Al: Your technical analysis about free speech may be true. You didn’t tell us if you are a Constitutional expert, but the facts of what happened on Sunday morning are all true. —Paul
Um, private people speaking is not “stifling free speech.” It’s speech. Stifling free speech, or violating one’s right to free speech, is when the government tells you what you can and cannot say, and when you can and cannot speak. OGU is not a government. The CMA is not either — anymore — although sometimes you’d be hard-pressed to tell. If anyone here has the power to stifle speech, it’s not the handful of people speaking their minds outside the building.
Al
I attended church today and Tony Campolo was very clear in describing the disenchantment by the young with the institutional approach of the church with its obvious social biases instead of pursuing Jesus’ doctrine of love to all.