Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, is a fine place to meet the ocean. On the first day my wife and I were scouting out apartments in the state, my brother drove us to Point Pleasant Beach after dark that October evening. The rollers were thundering on the deserted beach as we raced down to dip our fingers in the Atlantic. We went back on sunnier days to enjoy the miles of delightful beach for which the state is justly famous. Point Pleasant has an old-fashioned boardwalk, hearkening back to more innocent days when entertainment was carnival style and the only electronics involved were the blinking, colorful lights. As a borough, however, Point Pleasant Beach has been opening its council meetings with the Lord’s Prayer for six decades. A judge has called that practice to a halt, according to Saturday’s New Jersey Star Ledger.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to all religions is globalism. Historically, the religions of antiquity developed when pockets of human habitation were relatively isolated from one another. Yes, people traveled, but not with the ease or frequency borne by steam or gasoline engines. Religions evolved slowly and took on the local character of the only people most believers were likely to ever meet. The ancient religions of trading centers already show the traces of syncretism that religious purists so abhor. When the sea-farers of antiquity met new people it was only polite, politic, and profitable to share their religions. Monotheisms, however, demand complete adherence to doctrine. They don’t mix well. In today’s world where travel is easy (if accompanied by strangers groping your privates, if you choose to fly) and lifestyles and religions become connubial, civil meetings have to take their new clientele into account.

The Lord’s Prayer is about as inoffensive piece of Christianity that may be muttered. Nevertheless, it makes assumptions about the religious make-up of the community. New Jersey is startlingly diverse in constitution. It is a fascinating experiment in people from all over the world learning to live together. In the past sixty years the ethnic make-up has shifted and no longer can boroughs assume that all members are Christian. The prayer does affirm the wish that the kingdom of the patriarchal Christian God should establish itself on earth. And as much as tradition is to be valued, so much is religious government, on any level, to be feared.

Simpler times on a New Jersey beach?