People

Christian Century, Nov 8, 2000

* Melissa Rogers, 34, the general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee, a Washington-based religious-liberty watchdog group, said October 24 that she would leave the post within a week to join a newly created think tank on religion and public life. She will be executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a venture funded by Pew Charitable Trusts. The forum's co-conveners are Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution and Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago. Rogers joined the BJC staff in 1994 and five years later succeeded Brent Walker as general counsel. She helped lead a diverse coalition of religious and civil liberties groups that promoted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act signed this fall.

* The first woman minister to head a major denomination in South Africa was installed September 17 when Diane Vorster was "set apart" as moderator of the General Assembly of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. The UPCSA was formed only a year ago by the union of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of South Africa