Preacher

In their quest for readers to bring a special electricity to an audio book, companies usually stick to actors and professional readers. So what happens when they opt for orators and preachers? Magic, that's what. At least that's the result in God's Trombones, a Penguin HighBridge recording of James Weldon Johnson's classic work, subtitled Seven Negro Sermons in Verse and written in 1927. Johnson, a lawyer, writer and professor of literature, was a founder of the NAACP.

Television evangelist Pat Robertson said yesterday he would consider Lt. Col. Oliver North as his running mate in his bid for the Republican nomination for president. Robertson told a press conference his campaign office had received hundreds of letters urging him to consider the fired White House aide for the No. 2 spot. "I'm sure people would strongly consider him for vice president, including me," Robertson said, adding that he and North were on the "same side of the spectrum in favor of supporting the Contras.

The word from the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan was strong and clear: "The preacher is back on the job again. " Back to the struggle against South African apartheid. Back to the search for jobs and dignity for America's urban poor. Back to the pulpit "to sound an alarm to America," Sullivan said yesterday at his North Philadelphia church, as he urged other clergy to "start a whole new movement of conscience in this country. " The preachers - nearly 100 of them, all rising to their feet and some calling out "that's right!"

The crowd was sparse at the Rev. Thomas L. Devlin's last sermon. A mere three middle-aged women showed up for the 8 p.m. service, but an intimate crowd never bothered Devlin, especially since it was a Wednesday night and the ladies had come all the way from West Philly to assemble in the Logan basement to join his joyful chorus. Devlin's sister, Virginia, was about to come downstairs and join them. She was just putting her grandkids to bed. But then she heard the gunshots.

In his books and as a preacher, Bishop T.D. Jakes spends a lot of time talking about struggling to be a strong African American man amid easy temptations. But as a movie director, Jakes looked to a woman in trouble for inspiration. Several hundred people, many local religious leaders, came to see a sneak preview of Jakes' film, Woman, Thou Art Loosed, yesterday at the International House at the University of Pennsylvania. The movie, to be released nationally in October, follows the path of a woman who ends up on death row. "It's a constant struggle for people to find their place in life - from teens who are finding their identity to people who are older and searching for their purpose," said Jakes, who led his 25,000-member congregation in Dallas yesterday before attending the preview.

When Pat Robertson formally announces his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination today, his campaign will unveil a newly secularized candidate. Robertson's decision Tuesday to resign as a Southern Baptist minister and drop the title Reverend from his name was the culmination of efforts intended to remake Robertson from charismatic evangelical TV preacher to mainsteam politician. And according to Hubert Morken, an Oral Roberts University political scientist who is writing a book on Robertson, it all began with a conversation between the presidential candidate and a reporter late last year.

The Rev. William J. Shaw, the West Philadelphia Baptist preacher who campaigned nationwide to restore integrity and spirituality to the scandal-rocked National Baptist Convention USA Inc., is now its president. Shaw, 65, defeated 10 other candidates in Tampa, Fla., last night for a five-year term to head of one of the nation's largest black religious organizations. He has served as pastor of White Rock Baptist Church, 53rd and Chestnut streets, for 43 years. Now that church is likely to become a beehive of activity - while the National Baptists maintain headquarters in Nashville, the president has customarily based operations at his home church.

The Rev. Moses Marquette Peace Sr., 87, former pastor of Monumental Baptist Church, 50th and Locust Streets, and "Prince of Preachers," died Saturday at his home in West Philadelphia. "He was an excellent preacher," said the Rev. J. Wendell Mapson 2d, now the pastor at Monumental. "Even now there are people who can remember sermons he preached 30 and 40 years ago. "He was eloquent, he had a mastery of the language, and his sermons dripped with poetry," Mr. Mapson said. "His messages reflected his theology, (which)

A preacher, says Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), the unlikely hero of the surprisingly effective and satisfying demonic thriller The Last Exorcism , is also an entertainer, playwright, filmmaker, and magician. The God part, the part about the preacher's faith? That's entirely incidental, adds Marcus. Writer-director Daniel Stamm's sophomore feature is a superbly creepy story about a disillusioned preacher-turned-showman whose newfound atheism is challenged when he becomes embroiled with a real demon.

The Rev. C. Stephen White, a flamboyant Philadelphia street preacher accused of propositioning a West Chester boy for sex, was freed on bail yesterday. White's attorney, Robert J. Donatoni, had argued on Monday that his client's bail, set on July 3 by District Justice Mark Bruno at $100,000, was excessive, due to White's strong ties to the community and minimal criminal history. Chester County Judge Anthony A. Sarcione agreed, reducing the amount to $20,000, but adding a host of conditions.

The new Broadway musical "Leap of Faith," which opened Thursday night, is really "The Music Man" in a revival tent. A con-artist comes to a backwater town and in this case, he's not a phony musician, he's a phony preacher. And he doesn't get the whole town involved in a marching band, he turns them into a band of believers who march to his collection plate. And there you have it — a formulaic musical right down to the easy-to-see love affair that will develop between the preacher man and the no-nonsense woman who's the town sheriff and his nemesis, the boilerplate subplot that involves trouble and the unrealistic ooey-gooey ending.

Three Egyptians kept off ballot CAIRO - Egypt's election commission rejected the appeals of three main contenders for president Tuesday, removing the most polarizing candidates from the race to become the country's first elected leader since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The commission's decision removes the top contenders in the race - Mubarak-era strongman Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood chief strategist Khairat el-Shater, and Abu Ismail, a lawyer turned hard-line preacher.

CHARLES Thomas Bowman was a shy, retiring sort of guy - that is, until he climbed into the pulpit of his church. "He was different when he preached," said his sister, Jeanette Ward. "The spirit was in him. " The Rev. Charles Bowman, onetime Philadelphia public-school teacher, a supervisor in the state Department of Public Assistance for more than 30 years and a leader in the Fire Baptized Holiness Church, died Sunday of complications from kidney disease. He was 80 and lived in Germantown.

IF YOU HAPPEN to get to the Midwest and flick on a Christian radio station, you might hear the voice of the Rev. Edward E. Menaldino belting out a gospel song. As an Assembly of God preacher, Menaldino pastored Pentecostal churches throughout the country, and spent 30 years in Philadelphia as pastor of Calvary Temple, in South Philadelphia, and another six years as interim pastor at the Llanerch Hills Chapel, in Upper Darby. That his songs are still being sung is a testament not only to his powerful voice, but also to the passion of his faith that his voice projected.

Whether Texas street preacher Eddie Ray Wright is a victim, like the four people found captive in a Tacony basement - or is part of the alleged conspiracy to steal their government benefits - is a question a Philadelphia jury will decide. After an hour-long second preliminary hearing for Wright on Thursday, Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ordered Wright held for trial on assault, kidnapping, conspiracy, and related charges. On Oct. 15, police responding to a complaint found four mentally challenged adults - malnourished, abused, and locked in a fetid basement boiler room in the 4700 block of Longshore Avenue.

The District Attorney's Office refiled charges Thursday against a man a judge dismissed as a defendant in the alleged kidnapping and abuse case involving the inprisonment of four mentally challenged adults in a Tacony basement. Eddie Ray Wright, 50, is charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, terroristic threats and stalking. A hearing is set for Jan. 20. Wright remains in custody, said his lawyer, Lou D'Onofrio, who said he plans to ask the court to dismiss the charges again.

IN "MACHINE GUN Preacher," truth is so much stranger than fiction that fiction eventually throws in the towel. The movie is based on the wild, wild life of a Johnstown, Pa., man named Sam Childers, who went from meth user/dealer to fundamentalist preacher to gun-toting missionary in the Sudan. Childers (Gerard Butler) is a different sort of Christian. In Sudan, when he turns the other cheek, it's to steady the rifle butt he's using to gun down Africans who are abducting children for conscription into warlord armies fighting over territory in southern Sudan and northern Uganda.

Hit-and-run suspect charged in Jersey * Route 70 near Ranoldo Terrace, Cherry Hill Elisha Pollosco, 25, was arraigned yesterday on charges of leaving the scene of a car accident that left a 25-year-old Runnemede woman dead. Pollosco allegedly struck Binh Tsan on the shoulder of Route 70 just before 12:30 p.m. last Thursday. Tsan died Saturday at Cooper University Hospital of blunt head trauma. Pollosco, of Berlin, who has nearly a dozen driving violations since 2005, was convicted on theft charges in June and sentenced to three years' probation, according to court records.

The Rev. William David Thompson, 82, of Drexel Hill, an accomplished preacher who taught public-speaking techniques to others, died Monday, March 28, at home of pulmonary fibrosis. Dr. Thompson was a professor of preaching at Eastern Baptist Seminary from 1962 to 1987. While teaching, he was also interim pastor at several area Baptist churches, and from 1983 to 1990, he was pastor of First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. After leaving First Baptist, Mr. Thompson established Speakers Services.

SOLOMON BURKE was born on the second floor of a house on Mount Vernon Street near 30th, in West Philadelphia, to the sounds of drums and horns from church services below. "I don't even think they heard me, trombones and all that stuff playing in that little house," he once said. "Wasn't easy to hear a little baby crying. " Maybe so, but for the next 70 years, Solomon Burke's voice rang out loud and clear, first as a boy preacher, and ultimately as one of the greatest - some say the greatest - soul singer.