Worship

Sharon Baptist Church's stunning new 8.5-acre worship center in Wynnefield, the site of filled-to-capacity services for its initial Easter a year ago, will sit idle this Sunday. Enon Tabernacle Baptist's snug 800-seat space in Germantown won't have to feel the crush of spillover crowds. Instead, two of the city's largest Baptist congregations will join for worship at 10 a.m. at an unusual venue: Temple University's Liacouras Center. They expect to fill all 10,000 or so seats in one of the largest Resurrection Sunday services ever conducted in Philadelphia.

The remnants of the nationwide counterculture celebrated its beliefs among the curious and the uncommitted in a forest clearing here yesterday with a noon-hour worship of often naked silence. A bare-breasted woman stood in the midst of 7,000 people sitting on the grass, held high three feathers, and then turned to the four corners of the earth, again and again, leading the worship of nature in silence. A naked young man took her place, then a young woman in a long-sleeved white dress, then others.

Eighty-six - count 'em, 86 - ministries keep the Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ an exuberant house of the Lord, especially for young people and especially at Easter. On Palm Sunday, the drum and bugle corps ministry paraded down the main aisle. This week, the drama ministry is providing the climax for the Easter season with a three-night passion play in gospel rhythms. "If a church is going to be viable in reaching young people, you've got to have a level of excitement," said Bishop Ernest Morris as he viewed a rehearsal from the balcony of his new sanctuary at 6401 Ogontz Ave. "Especially with young people, you've got to do more than preach sermons and sing songs.

The Quaker meeting for worship begins without hymns, spoken prayers or announcements - just silence, the kind of thoughtful quiet that not even a bird's song or a toddler's whisper can penetrate. "Sometimes," said Randy Lyons, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, "the most rewarding meeting is one where nobody says a word. You come away, and everyone knows it's been a special meeting. " The low-key approach to worship reflects the lifestyle of the Quakers, 3,000 of whom live in Chester County.

Easter arrives this year in tandem with the very beginning of spring. This weekend, many houses of worship are the essence of simplicity; stripped of adornment, they await the arrival of Easter. Others are wearing their holiday finery: flowers, bright colors and a fresh scrubbing. So get out a comfortable pair of walking shoes, because in Philadelphia we are particularly blessed with historic houses of worship that have lasted through the decades and continue to hold active congregations.

They died pretty much the way they lived - hard and uneasy. Their lives had been full of strenuous work and burdens too heavy to weigh. Some were ex-slaves. All were members of the First African Baptist Church. They were buried between 1810 and 1842 in the church's cemeteries at 8th and Vine and 10th and Vine. Incredibly, though, some of the old-time members have yet to find a final resting place. Ninety-seven still are housed in the offices of John Milner Associates, an architectural and archaeological consulting firm studying the members' remains in hopes of discovering more about these 19th-century African-Americans.

Although they are all gone, buried in a graveyard a mile away, the founders of the 165-year-old Mount Moriah A.M.E. Church in Mount Holly are very much alive to James B. Irby. Each time he enters the Washington Street house of worship, he said he feels their warmth and spirit emanating from the old wooden pews and the bright stained-glass windows. "I believe there is a sweet spirit and a magic love that has kept this church going for 165 years," said Irby, church historian and superintendent of the Sunday school.

Donna Echols, her bare feet making no sound, moves expressively to the music. At first, she moves slowly, her arms open wide to the heavens. But as the tempo picks up and the drums begin beating, she twirls and leaps. Her face, a study in peaceful contemplation, provides a marked contrast to her quick, gracefully moving body. She ends the dance on her knees, hands clasped, as if in prayer. When Echols dances, she is praying. The art form is called liturgical dance, and last Sunday Echols demonstrated for an appreciative congregation at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hatboro.

Ryan Howard said he might call Barry Bonds to "see what's going on" or "talk some trash, maybe. " The Giants organization had the disgraced slugger throw out the first pitch Tuesday.  Anyone else think it's odd that, of all the players in Giants history, they chose to honor Bonds before Game 3? That's some serious trash Howard could talk. "Hey, Barry, your head keeps getting smaller, what's that all about? . . . Barry, is it true HGH doesn't work in the postseason? . . . Explain to me again the difference between a grand slam and a grand jury.

If the thing you don't like about most church services is that they just don't have enough drum solos, or that hardly anybody ever says "cool daddy," then check out the righteous jams going down Sunday at jazz vespers. Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church conducts this unusual worship service the third Sunday of every month, promptly at 5 p.m. There are no cover charge, no ID check and no drink minimum (of course, there are no drinks, either). It's open to everyone and, if you're willing to take a pass on the collection plate, it's absolutely free.

Gathering steam on new material for an album, Billy Idol, the hitmaking, class-of-'76 British punk-rock original (he formed the band Generation X that year) speaks with his famous cackle, a swaggering punctuation to his mellifluous voice. Being Idol in 2013 is about playing the new songs ("several of them, surprisingly more ballad-like") alongside classics such as "White Wedding. " "I think I'm telling stories in the new stuff," Idol says. "We don't want to overload people with material they haven't heard, but I think the risk is worth taking.

How often does a piece with multiple authors and a broad-reaching concept come out as a cohesive whole, but with poetic elusiveness that leaves you, hours later, pondering what you've experienced? Such was the case when the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts' time-machine concept made one of its less-well-documented stops: Where Heaven's Dew Divides , a dance/theater work that opened Wednesday at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Studio, commemorates the African American religious community's rebellion against discrimination in worship services and the 1794 founding of St. Thomas' African Episcopal Church.

THREE DECADES after the last Jewish congregation in West Philly left for the Main Line, a new one is growing in a neighborhood that once held a vibrant Jewish community of synagogues, shops and, of course, bakeries. Congregation Kol Tzedek's creation story goes back to the mid-2000s, when rabbi-in-training Lauren Grabelle Herrmann began talking up the idea of starting a congregation in the neighborhood. "When I mentioned it, my neighbor on Farragut Street said, 'I have the menorah from the last synagogue in West Philadelphia.' " (That would be Congregation Beth Hamedrosh-Beth Jacob, which was a holdout into the '80s at 60th and Larchwood)

For the six folks who are often the only congregation at the Old Caln Meeting House near Coatesville, the simple structure on a country road is an old, old relative that gets considerable care. But when an architect climbed an outside ladder in March 2012 to look into the attic, he blanched, according to congregation member Adrian Martinez. "He said, 'Why is this building still standing?' " Fair question. The older section was built in 1726, the other in 1801. The concern was not with age, but construction.

Parishioners attending the Spanish-language Mass on Sunday at St. Veronica Church in North Philadelphia were ecstatic about the election of Pope Francis, even using affectionate nicknames to refer to the first Latin American pontiff. "Papa Pancho" and "Paco" are among the Spanish references to Pope Francis that Martiza Delgado said she was hearing in her heavily Latino neighborhood. "It's marvelous," Delgado, 48, who immigrated from Ecuador two decades ago, said of the new pope's Latin American roots.

WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill to allow houses of worship damaged by Hurricane Sandy to receive federal disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The House voted 354-72 for the bill, which now goes to the Senate. Houses of worship would be added to the federal government's list of private nonprofit organizations eligible for FEMA aid to help rebuild under the measure. Critics said it goes against the constitutional separation of church and state.

ATLANTIC CITY - On the Friday after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the Jersey Shore, the Rev. Joseph Pham's church began collecting donations. Our Lady Star of the Sea, the Catholic Church where Pham serves with three other priests, had barely weathered Hurricane Sandy. The basements of the rectory and convent were flooded. Water had crept into the cafeteria and the basement of the parish's elementary school. Only the church itself - an imposing stone building on Atlantic Avenue - had survived unscathed.

THE COLLECTION plates weren't passed around at the 11 a.m. worship service at Mother Bethel AME Church in Society Hill on Sunday, and the pews remained empty. The service was canceled so that congregants could register people to vote at eight other churches throughout southeastern Pennsylvania as part of a national campaign known as "Let My People Vote. " The campaign is a push to combat voter suppression in the face of new voter-ID laws. Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, senior pastor of Mother Bethel, urged his congregants to attend the church's 8 a.m. service and then to attend other churches' 11 a.m. services to register people to vote.

KANO, Nigeria - Gunmen attacked worship services at a university and a church Sunday in northern Nigeria, killing at least 21 people in coordinated assaults that saw panicked Christians gunned down as they tried to flee, witnesses and officials said. The first attack targeted a section of Bayero University's campus in Kano where churches hold services, with gunmen killing at least 16 people and wounding at least 22, according to the Nigerian Red Cross. In a later attack, in the northeast city of Maiduguri, gunmen open fire at a Church of Christ in Nigeria chapel, killing five people, including a pastor preparing for Communion, witnesses said.