Son took a licking, kept on clicking

0 Comments | Philadelphia Daily News, March, 2007 | by MARK KRAM

The usual hundred or so worshipers showed up for the 10:30 a.m. service at the First Baptist Church one Sunday last fall. Given the increasing slippage of young people from the rolls, Rev. Gregory Hogan has found himself with a graying congregation, the members of which he greeted at the door with a cheeriness that belied the ordeal he has been through. As some passed, they held on to his hand and asked in a tactful whisper: "How is Greg?" And he would reply that his son is doing better, that he is over the initial shock of incarceration and that he is taking it day by day.

The sermon he had prepared for that Sunday was titled "Where Do I Draw the Line?" Hogan has pondered that question in some depth since his son Greg Jr., a former class president at Lehigh University and...