Local Church

Jessica Hahn was jubilant yesterday over defrocked minister Jim Bakker's conviction for fleecing his followers. "This proves that Jim Bakker can't walk on water," the 28-year-old former church secretary said from her father's home. "I won't sing . . . the way Tammy Faye (Bakker) did after the verdict. I'll just say we've seen God's grace at work. He got what he deserved. " Bakker resigned as president of his $129 million-a-year PTL empire in March 1987 after confessing to a sexual encounter with Hahn in a Florida hotel room in 1980, when she was 19. She said she was raped and was later paid more than $250,000 in hush money.

Know any red-brick churches in your neighborhood? Call the Philadelphia Film Office. Jack Michon, producer of NBC's new sitcom, Amen, will be in town tomorrow in search of a red-brick church to use in its opening sequence. Amen stars Philadelphian Sherman Hemsley (The Jeffersons) as wisecracking Deacon Ernest Frye of the ficticious First Community Church of Philadelphia. His foil is the church's moralistic pastor, the Rev. Reuben Gregory (Clifton Davis). Fellow Philadelphian Ed. Weinberger, a Central High grad, is creator and executive producer.

The strong scent of incense greeted worshipers as they entered St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Upper Darby. Passing yellow ribbons hung on church lanterns, some paused to light candles in the vestibule before entering the sanctuary. Once inside, they stood quietly, their thoughts with the soldiers and the civilians caught up in the Persian Gulf war. "Again we pray that Thou will swiftly hear us and deliver us from the grievous crisis in the Middle East, granting peace, justice and deliverance for all the inhabitants of these lands," said the Rev. Antoun Aaraj, pastor.

On a fateful January night in North Carolina, Michael Brock said he saw the fierce tornado that changed his life. "Through the window, I saw it coming," he said. "I shoved my wife and her brother through the door, and as I was taking a step down the stairs of the porch, the tornado swept me up. "The next thing I remember is me lying on the ground next to the mobile home, and seeing my wife, Belinda, crawling out from beneath it," Brock said. The Brocks survived the gusty winds that ripped through their home in Garland, N.C., on Jan. 7. For more than two hours in driving rain and dropping temperatures, they waited for emergency crews.

For most of his life, he was the baddest of the bad - an illiterate outlaw biker with a mile-long record and a dizzying array of addictions. But Gloucester City has always meant something to Ronald "Doc" Dahlquist. "I hung here and drank here and fought here and got shot here, and then I got cleaned up and now I preach here," Dahlquist said, all tattooed arms, Jesus rings and gravelly voice. Fifteen years ago, he also had his last drink here at a bar, Empty Pockets, just three blocks from what was a long-abandoned Lutheran church at 245 Fourth St. and is now the home of his nondenominational Amazing Grace Christian Fellowship Church.

Tracy Cass barely knew David Powell. But she knew the half-bushels of peaches and apples stacked next to his old red barn on Tomlinson Road. As a child, Cass recalled, she visited Powell's orchard with her family, and the fruit tasted natural and special. After Powell died in September 1999 at age 92, his stucco-covered stone farmhouse - which local restoration buffs date to the pre-Revolutionary War era - was destined for mothballs. The white paint was peeling, the pine floors were rotting, and the basement resembled a scene from a horror flick, Cass, now 40, recalled.

On Saturday evening, Philadelphia will be among 44 cities around the world taking part in International GuluWalk Day. Participants will simulate a "night commute. " They will walk and stay overnight at a local church to raise awareness of children caught in war in northern Uganda. Gulu is a town in northern Uganda. In the last 19 years, 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves. Thousands more, called "night commuters," make a nightly trek from their rural homes to sleep in the relative safety of cities.

In his Dec. 14 column, Clark DeLeon ended an item captioned "The church: A priest responds" with a request that someone prove him wrong. I don't intend to set out to prove Mr. DeLeon wrong but, in a sense of fairness and balance, to give another point of view. As one who has been a priest in the Roman Catholic Church of Philadelphia for nearly 26 years, I must confess my experience with the "bureaucracy" has been just the opposite of that of the author of the anonymous letter. Like many other priests in times of transfer, sickness and even death in their families, I have experienced warmth and understanding from this "bureaucracy.

The future of Garfield Elementary School is uncertain once again. The Willingboro School District did not receive payment from a local church, the highest bidder for the property, by Monday's deadline, board solicitor Rocky Peterson said. If the Cathedral of Love church does not pay the district the full $1,777,777.77 by March 20, the property can be purchased by the second-highest bidder. Peterson said he had sent a letter to the church on Monday alerting it of the new deadline.

U.S. Postal Inspectors yesterday arrested a stockbroker who allegedly stole more than $700,000 from clients, among them a local church and a funeral director who'd invested pre-paid burial funds with the broker. The broker, James M. Coyne Jr., 31, of Newtown Square, Delaware County, a former account executive with Advest in St. Davids, was jailed by U.S. Magistrate Peter B. Scuderi pending a bail hearing tomorrow. St. Lucy's Church, on Smick Street near Green, and the Burg Funeral Home, in Red Lion, Pa., in York County, were among Coyne's victims, according to an affidavit filed in federal court by Postal Inspector Carol A. Hazelton.

Convert high school into seminary I've educated four children in the archdiocese's schools, and while it is sad that so many need to close for lack of enrollment and financial reasons, I wonder if the archdiocese has seriously considered the largest educational drain on its resources: St. Charles Borromeo Seminary ("Grief and anger," Sunday). While beautiful and historic, the seminary buildings are underutilized and in need of hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs for a very small number of Philadelphians studying for the priesthood.

Shortly after 11 yesterday morning, Bishop Joseph Galante stood over Lawrence Polansky and John Rossi as the two prostrated themselves before the altar of St. Peter Celestine Church in Cherry Hill. "Hear us, Lord, our God," Galante prayed, "and pour out on these servants of yours the blessing of the Holy Spirit. " Moments later, he lay hands on their heads, and called on both to stand as the newest priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden. Ordinations are joyous moments in the life of a diocese, and yesterday's were no exception.

Christmas morning. I was giddy with joy over my stash under the tree: the Willie Mays baseball bat, the Bob Cousy basketball, the Robert Hall suit. I was 16, and, believe me, 'twas the season to be jolly. As I was practicing my home-run swing in the living room wall mirror, my father suddenly appeared - and pointed toward the local church. I knew what he meant. My father knew where his blessings came from and wanted me to know where mine came from as well. Ah, yes, the eternal scrum: secular vs spiritual.

On Saturday evening, Philadelphia will be among 44 cities around the world taking part in International GuluWalk Day. Participants will simulate a "night commute. " They will walk and stay overnight at a local church to raise awareness of children caught in war in northern Uganda. Gulu is a town in northern Uganda. In the last 19 years, 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves. Thousands more, called "night commuters," make a nightly trek from their rural homes to sleep in the relative safety of cities.

Crispen Masuka and his family traveled 7,800 miles from their home in Zimbabwe to stand in the pulpits of U.S. congregations and tell their story. It is a sad account about a sister and her husband who died of AIDS, and a country and continent so ravaged by the disease that thousands die each day. Perhaps, Masuka says, if Americans who love God see him and hear him, in the flesh, they will want to help. "So many young families are dying and leaving small children with no one to care," said Masuka, 53. "It happened in my family, so I resolved that I should do something about it. " What Masuka has done, with the help of local sponsors, is to enroll as a psychology major at Immaculata College, studying to become a counselor qualified to work with AIDS families in his homeland.

Finding a Republican on the Pennsauken political scene in recent decades has been like coming across a decaying ship in the desert: How in the world did that get there? Save for a spell in the mid-1980s when two Republicans briefly seized seats on the five-member Township Committee, this blue-collar town has been all Democrat, all the time, since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Now, a diverse Republican organization led by Eliud Gautier - a 43-year-old outreach coordinator for a local church - is taking aim at the Democrats and looking to put two candidates on the committee in November.

A pair of underwear with spongy posterior-enhancers topped the pile. Underneath there was low-cut lingerie in filmy white. Nearby was a scattered slip in peach with cream eyelets. The church ladies closely guarded the 10 or so rummage tables - even the one piled with unmentionables - and pored over the wares themselves at the First Baptist Church of Haddonfield last week. It's open season on rummage - with sales in South Jersey attracting hundreds of bargain-hunters who queue up outside churches and other organizations long before the doors open.

In marking its World Day for Consecrated Life this weekend, the Roman Catholic Church is pressing the theme "Be Seekers of the Lord. " Not a problem for Mary Ann Johnston. Since her days as a parochial-school girl in South Philadelphia, Johnston has felt drawn to "give myself to God. " Over time, she felt the Lord was seeking her, in return, in a special way. To be His spiritually betrothed virgin-bride. So Johnston, 54, of Phoenixville, decided to become an official "consecrated virgin.

St. Cyril of Alexandria Roman Catholic Church, 153 Penn Blvd., East Lansdowne, will hold the sixth annual Delaware County Celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland, next Thursday through Aug. 25. Rosary and benediction will be at 7:30 p.m. next Thursday and Aug. 24. Mass will be celebrated at 5 p.m. Aug. 25, followed by dinner and entertainment. Dinner is $15 per adult and $5 for children ages 12 and older. Children younger than 12 are free. Tax rebate suggestions The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church is offering suggestions on how members may want to use federal tax-rebate checks.

Margie Baker grew up in and around St. John's Episcopal Church. As a young girl, she watched construction workers lay its cornerstone in 1956. And last year, she buried her father, H. Raymond Baker, on the church grounds. But none of that matters now, Baker said, because "to me, the church is not a building, it's people, and the people are going. If my father was alive, he'd be going, too. " Baker, 51, of Abington, joined the rest of the congregation yesterday for the Rev. Philip Lyman's final sermon at 9:30 a.m. at St. John's, 1333 Old Welsh Rd. Most of the congregation of 360 is moving rather than conform with what it perceives as liberal and un-Christian teachings of the Episcopal Church USA and its local leader, Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.