salt and salvation: atlantic city’s search for grace

before the vice, there was virtue. before the sin, there were sermons.

before the glitter and the gambling, atlantic city was a recovery site. a miracle wrapped in sand. in the 1850s the railroad finally reached the island, and trains started bringing people from philadelphia who wanted to breathe clean air again. doctors called the shore a “natural sanatorium.” they said the salt could mend lungs, lift moods, and purify the blood. the victorians believed every cough was a moral failing and every cure came from the ocean.

by the 1870s the holiness movement had arrived. revival tents went up along the dunes near what is now chelsea. crowds sang hymns while the waves rolled in behind them. itinerant preachers came

from the mainland to lead what they called “sea air meetings.” they said the wind itself was divine, that god was speaking through the gulls. early hotels advertised “rooms for convalescence and prayer.” one brochure promised that “a fortnight by the sea restores the body and uplifts the soul.”

for a few decades it worked. families arrived with bibles, not liquor. there were sunday schools on the sand, baptisms in the surf, open-air sermons beside horses and carriages. people believed the ocean could wash away grief as easily as salt from skin. atlantic city was marketed as moral medicine.

then came the entrepreneurs. someone realized that people would pay just as much for entertainment as for enlightenment. the revival tents turned into theaters. the hymns turned into show tunes. the line between salvation and spectacle blurred until nobody cared to separate them. by the early 1900s, the same breeze that once carried sermons carried jazz and cigarette smoke.

i walk the beach some mornings and think about how people used to come here for god. now they come for a weekend. i don’t think the two are that different. everyone wants to disappear into something bigger than themselves. everyone wants to come back changed.

i’m not religious in the traditional sense, but i believe the concept of god is everything that is, ever was, and will be. the ocean and the shells. the sandcrabs that live in the sand. the dried-up gum stuck to the boardwalk. the sound of the waves under steel pier. the flicker of a slot machine that somehow keeps winning. the strangers who tell you their whole life story in line for a slice at three in the morning. you. me. i don’t believe in worshipping an individual but rather worship the earth and the beauty between the cracks.

atlantic city heals me in its own strange way. walking around the casinos, people watching, talking to strangers, staring at the ocean until my thoughts finally shut up. it’s a city that hums with every kind of prayer, loud and quiet. sometimes faith looks like trust. empathy. humanity. sometimes it smells like salt and fry oil. sometimes it’s just the act of showing up again.

the preachers said the sea air could heal you. maybe they were right. maybe it still does, just differently now. it pulls you back into yourself. it scrapes the noise off. it reminds you you’re small but still part of something alive.

the revival never ended. it only changed hands. the believers are still here. the bartenders, the gamblers, the night-shift workers, the gulls, the girls walking home at sunrise. everyone breathing in the same salt the victorians swore could save them.

same sea. same prayer. different gods.

working on the new aRTeriors magazine with the atlantic city arts foundation got me thinking about this side of the city — the healing one, the in-between one. the artists, builders, and dreamers keeping the lights on even when the season fades. aRTeriors is proof that revival doesn’t always need a pulpit; sometimes it’s a paint-stained hand, a wall that used to be empty, or a story told over cheap beer.

you can see the installations yourself, breathe the same salt air the victorians swore could save them, and watch what happens when art starts to pray back to the city.

get your tickets now → atlanticcityartsfoundation.org/arteriors

i will, however, always trust a boardwalk psychic.

Well, I guess everything dies, baby, that's a fact

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

So fix your hair up nice and set up pretty

And meet me tonight in Atlantic City