Covenant

In The Covenant's swank, stuffy New England boarding school, Caleb (Steven Strait) and Polk (Taylor Kitsch) are BWOCs (beautiful warlocks on campus). They are descendants of bloodlines that go back to (and probably caused) the Salem witch hunts. They may look like Abercrombie models, but they have inherited awesome, if nebulous, powers. The drawback: The more you use the magic, the faster you age. At 44, Caleb's father looks like the portrait of Dorian Gray. It's all fun and games, with the guys using their abilities to razz the local constabulary until it becomes clear that a mysterious entity is using the same powers for evil.

America is flush with the promise of a new year, a new administration, a new covenant. A covenant implies a compact, bonded by pledges. President-elect Clinton suggests that under his new covenant, the government will guarantee opportunity and the people must fulfill responsibilities. But in our political system, the government is not an independent actor. The press celebrates each new president as a political savior, even as it prepares to crucify him later. But no politician, not even a new president, can make change unless the people make change happen.

In his filibuster-length State of the Union address, President Clinton spoke of a "new covenant" with the American people, a phrase he employed at the Democratic convention in New York in 1992. Is this the new old covenant, or the old new covenant? It doesn't matter. The new Republican majority in Congress is about the business of fulfilling its contract, not the president's covenant. Clinton spent a lot of time talking about the future and the past. He said nothing about the present.

The nation's oldest life-insurance company could soon be history, under terms of a merger agreement reached this week between two local insurers. Covenant Life Insurance Co., founded in 1717 and known for more than a century as the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund, will be absorbed into Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Philadelphia, if state regulators and the two companies' policyholders approve the plan. Both insurance companies' boards of directors approved the merger proposal Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Insurance Department.

Victory is in hand; the struggle begins. As a candidate, Gov. Clinton sought a mandate for change. He offered an explicit "new covenant" with the American people. He wrote it down, printed it up, distributed it widely and campaigned on it. On Nov. 3, millions of Americans rallied to his call for change, turning out an incumbent. Now a new struggle begins to enable President-elect Clinton to fulfill the covenant he made with the people. It will not be easy. The promises made constitute, in Clinton's words, "a radically different direction," one that will provide new hope and opportunity for millions of Americans - and therefore face deeply entrenched resistance intent on delay and obstruction.

A formal challenge to the merger of Covenant Life Insurance Co. and Provident Mutual Life Insurance was filed yesterday in Chester County court. Opponents of the merger, which would end Covenant's existence as the oldest life insurance company in America, asked a judge to block the deal immediately on grounds that it violated the 277-year-old company's charter. Covenant was known until 1990 as the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company's board of directors signed a merger agreement earlier this year under which Provident, of Philadelphia, would absorb the Berwyn-based company.

Covenant Life Insurance Co. dodged a roadblock yesterday on the way to its proposed merger with Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co., but at least one more potential pothole appeared in the deal's path. Covenant, of Berwyn, the nation's oldest life insurance company, is better known by its former name, the Presbyterian Minister's Fund. It moved a little closer to voluntary extinction when its board of corporators voted yesterday in favor of the Provident merger. The corporators, a group of religious and business leaders from all over the United States, also voted to retroactively dissolve the board, ratifying a 1993 decision by Covenant's management.

Pennsylvania's insurance commissioner yesterday gave her conditional blessing to the controversial merger of two area life insurers, but demanded the sacrifice of about $2 million in bonuses to top executives. Commissioner Cynthia Maleski said she would allow Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co., of Philadelphia, to absorb the 277-year-old Covenant Life Insurance Co., America's oldest life insurer, which is better known by its former name, the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The Provident-Covenant merger had drawn fire from both Covenant employees and local Presbyterian church officials, who say the deal would eliminate a historic company and a valuable service to members of the clergy.

Carol and Glenn McFarlane realize that the pool in their back yard probably will have to go. They just wish they had known that above-ground pools were not allowed in their neighborhood before they spent $14,000 installing one. The McFarlanes dotted all the administrative i's and crossed all the bureaucratic t's when they built the swimming pool behind their dream house in Makefield Crossing. They contacted the township and the county, got all the required permits, and even posted a notice near their house a week before they built the pool.

Yet another attack on the controversial merger of two local insurance companies was launched yesterday in the form of a class-action lawsuit filed in Delaware County. Acting on behalf of several area pastors, the law firm of Chimicles Jacobsen & Tikelis sued Covenant Life Insurance Co. and its board of directors, seeking to prevent Covenant's planned acquisition by Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. Covenant, of Berwyn - founded in 1717 and called the Presbyterian Minister's Fund for much of its life - agreed in March to be taken over by Provident.

High noon, downtown Camden. The young blond woman staggering along Broadway in ultrashort shorts makes it clear she doesn't want any help. But a block away, Maxine Bennett eagerly waves to the Covenant House van I'm riding in. The privately funded nonprofit agency "really got me what I needed," says Bennett, 22, who on this occasion needs a ride to her Fairview home with daughter, Paris, 1. "Things are getting better," Maxine says as...

There is an unspoken covenant between the professional baseball team of Philadelphia and the raving lunatic loyalists who support it with what can only be described as impassioned, unconditional tough love. And that covenant is this: As long as you are trying, really, really, really trying to build a winner, we will support you. We will put up with those $20 beers (not yet but inevitable, along with the $30 parking, etc. etc. etc.). And we will continue to snap up those bobbleheads and those Hunter Pence tees (instant memorabilia)

Marvel has been beating rival DC like a drum on the sales charts lately, and the recent release of the first issue of its "Halo: Uprising" limited series perfectly illustrates why. While Marvel has consistently been producing stories, titles and projects that have excited its loyal fan base, it has also done a wonderful job of bringing new readers into the hobby. Indeed, retailers all over the country have reported that books such as "Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born" (based on the popular Stephen King novels)

Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Moses and the Ten Commandments - these are some of the best-known stories of the Old Testament. But tug at the obscure Bible story of Joseph and his bones, says scholar Jerome M. Segal, and there emerges a startling new way to read the first books of Jewish scripture. In his new book, Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible (Riverhead, $24.95), Segal proposes that the Torah and the Book of Joshua are a sly, close-to-blasphemous account of mankind's effort to tame and ethicize the jealous, impulsive character of God. "God has his own very specific project, not made fully clear, that has to do with creating something in his image that will come to know him," Segal, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Maryland, said in a recent interview.

In The Covenant's swank, stuffy New England boarding school, Caleb (Steven Strait) and Polk (Taylor Kitsch) are BWOCs (beautiful warlocks on campus). They are descendants of bloodlines that go back to (and probably caused) the Salem witch hunts. They may look like Abercrombie models, but they have inherited awesome, if nebulous, powers. The drawback: The more you use the magic, the faster you age. At 44, Caleb's father looks like the portrait of Dorian Gray. It's all fun and games, with the guys using their abilities to razz the local constabulary until it becomes clear that a mysterious entity is using the same powers for evil.

New officers of Covenant Presbyterian Church, 400 Lancaster Ave., Malvern, will be installed at a special service at 9:45 a.m. Sunday. Regular services will be at 8:30 and 11 a.m. Halcyon, the church seniors' group, will hold a luncheon at the church at noon Tuesday. At 4:30 p.m. Thursday, the Covenanters and Jewels musical groups will meet at the church. The Children's Chimes group meets at 6 p.m. and the Chancel Choir meets at 7:30 p.m. FAMILIES Special services honoring 17 new families that have joined Congregation B'nai Jacob, Starr and Manavon Streets, Phoenixville, will be held following Sabbath services at 7:30 p.m. today.

Carol and Glenn McFarlane realize that the pool in their back yard probably will have to go. They just wish they had known that above-ground pools were not allowed in their neighborhood before they spent $14,000 installing one. The McFarlanes dotted all the administrative i's and crossed all the bureaucratic t's when they built the swimming pool behind their dream house in Makefield Crossing. They contacted the township and the county, got all the required permits, and even posted a notice near their house a week before they built the pool.

Saturday was Juneteenth, the annual celebration of African- American freedom. Juneteenth is a celebration of bitter irony, since it marks the day in 1865 when Texas slaves learned slavery had ended with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The only hitch: the proclamation had been in effect for 21/2 years before the news reached Texas. Last week, Philadelphia celebrated another long-overdue moment: the launch of Project New Convenant, a collaboration of black clergy, BEBASHI (a local AIDS group)

The AIDS issue has sometimes been an uncomfortable one for many of Philadelphia's black clergy because of its link to homosexuality. But attitudes are changing. Nearly two decades after the first case of AIDS was reported in Philadelphia, with black males making up 70 percent of new cases, the city's black clergy yesterday pledged their unified support for efforts to combat the plague. At a morning news conference in City Hall, preachers unveiled Project New Covenant, a program that will promote HIV prevention, education, testing and treatment in the African-American community.

House Republicans gave it everything they had. They used lectures and detailed legal analyses. They used folksiness and appeals to patriotism. They tried to raise and then parry the anticipated arguments from White House lawyers, who get their turn starting Tuesday. And they saved the best for last, a stirring closing by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde that pushed every rhetorical button. But the quality of their exhaustive and at times powerful arguments for the removal of the President of the United States did not appear to alter the underlying political dynamic of the impeachment process.