c. 2007 Religion News Service

South African Anglicans Elect New Primate

(RNS) Bishop Thabo Makgoba was elected Archbishop of Cape Town and leader of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on Tuesday (Sept. 25), succeeding a stalwart ally of the embattled Episcopal Church in the U.S.

Makgoba, the current bishop of the Diocese of Grahamstown, will take over as primate, or top bishop, on Jan. 1, 2008, succeeding the retiring Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane.

The youngest bishop ever elected primate, Makgoba, 47, will inherit the office once held by anti-Apartheid leader Desmond Tutu. Episcopal News Service reported Makgoba saying he has “very big shoes and miters” to fill.

The Anglican Church of South Africa _ which has emerged as a progressive voice in the deeply conservative African church _ has 25 dioceses covering 3 million to 4 million members in about 1,000 parishes.

Ndungane has been a solid ally to the Episcopal Church as it faces pressure from other Anglican churches to pull back on its support for gay rights. Ndungane has said the issue distracts from more pressing issues, including AIDS and global poverty.

Makgoba ran against Pretoria Bishop Johannes Seoka and the Rev. Barney Pityana in the election. He is married and has two children.

_ Heather Donckels

Civil union law fails same-sex couples, lawyers’ group says

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) They were designed to give same-sex couples all the benefits of marriage by a different name, but New Jersey civil unions are a “failed experiment,” the president of the state’s largest lawyers’ organization said.

“They have been shown to perpetuate a second-class legal status,” Lynn Newsome, president of the New Jersey State Bar Association told a state commission evaluating whether New Jersey’s seven-month-old civil unions law is working.

Calling the law “burdensome and flawed,” Newsome said the 17,000-member bar association supports “as one of its highest priorities” legislation allowing same-sex couples to marry.

The civil union law was passed to comply with last October’s ruling by the state Supreme Court that same-sex couples are entitled to all the benefits and obligations that state law confers on married couples.

Wednesday’s (Sept. 26) hearing in New Brunswick was the first of three by the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission.

Although the state Division on Civil Rights has received only six formal complaints by same-sex couples claiming they were denied their rights under the new law, many more informal complaints have been lodged with gay rights groups.

The gay advocacy group Lambda Legal has gotten more than 100 complaints from couples in civil unions, according to staff attorney David Buckel, who added, “I stopped keeping count because there were just too many.”

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, which has vowed to legalize same-sex marriage within two years, said his organization has received more than 300 complaints of civil unions not being honored.

Part of the problem is a 1996 federal law that denies same-sex couples the 1,138 federal benefits and obligations that various federal statutes confer on married couples. Private employers and unions with federally regulated health and pension plans can use that law to avoid giving workers in civil unions the same benefits their married co-workers get.

Tom Barbera, a union leader in Massachusetts, the only state that allows same-sex couples to marry, told the commission most employers there do not hide behind the federal law.

“From the day our marriage equality law took effect (in 2004), through today, civil rights organizations in Massachusetts, as well as our state government, have received virtually no complaints about companies not providing health care benefits to same-sex married couples,” Barbera said. “This is in stark contrast to what New Jersey is experiencing.”

_ Robert Schwaneberg

Baptists Must Seek Consensus, BWA Chief Says

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) The new general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance has little patience for theological disputes between moderate and conservative Baptists.

“What’s centrally important is our concern for missions and evangelism, relief and development, human rights and theological reflection,” said the Rev. Neville Callam of Jamaica, who took over the post on Sept. 1.

The Baptist World Alliance, which represents about 37 million Baptists in various countries, got caught in the middle of feuding factions a few years ago when the Southern Baptist Convention cut its annual funding to BWA from $425,000 in 2003 to zero in 2005.

In 2003, the Baptist World Alliance admitted as a member body the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group that had split off from Southern Baptists, saying Southern Baptists had become too fundamental.

Southern Baptist leaders then began accusing the World Alliance of drifting toward liberalism.

“We are very grateful to the many churches, including Southern Baptist Convention churches, that continue to support our work,” Callam said during a visit here to Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School as part of an 18-city tour of the U.S. and Canada.

“People on both sides have simplified the beliefs of people on the other side and those caricatures are not helpful,” he said.

Differences over the role of women in ministry, homosexuality and other issues are serious but don’t preclude larger cooperation, he said.

“If the issues were clear-cut, you wouldn’t have the difference,” Callam said. “We need to seek out core ideas around which we have consensus.”

Callam, 56, has been a pastor of churches in Jamaica since 1964. Baptists make up 11 percent of Jamaica’s 2.8 million population and have a long history there, he said.

“Baptists were at the forefront of the struggle against slavery in Jamaica and are very respected there,” Callam said.

_ Greg Garrison

Quote of the Day: Barbara Moore of Brightwood, Ore.

(RNS) “I think he added his super to her natural.”

_ Barbara Moore, daughter of Doris Anderson, a 76-year-old woman from Sandy, Ore., speaking about how she believes God helped her mother survive almost two weeks in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon. Moore, of Brightwood, Ore., was quoted by The Oregonian.

KRE/LF END RNS