Priest wins K-word case, but loses his job

An Anglican priest has been booted out of the church after obtaining a court order against a racist colleague.

The Rev Brian Stephen went to the Equality Court after he was allegedly called the K-word by lay minister Trevor Kordom.

In July the court ordered that Kordom be suspended, undergo sensitivity courses, pay Stephen R5000 in compensation and write an apology to be read out during a Sunday morning service.

Despite this, no action has been taken by the church against Kordom. But Stephen has effectively been axed for taking his complaint to court.

A frustrated Stephen said this week he had become a “house husband” since the church stopped his salary in September.

Following the Equality Court ruling, the head of the Saldanha Bay diocese, Bishop Raphael Hess, wrote to Stephen and told him he was not prepared to nominate the priest for any parish in the diocese because he had “chosen not to use the processes for healing and reconciliation provided for in the canons of the church”.

Stephen said he was particularly upset that Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba’s office had refused to get involved.

This week, a spokeswoman in Makgoba’s office, Wendy Kelderman, said it was “a diocesan matter”.

Kordom refused to comment this week.

South African Council of Churches general secretary Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana said the reality was that there had still not been much socialisation away from the divisive and “socially toxic mindset of the apartheid era”, to which the church was not immune.

Read more in the Sunday Times.