A British nurse named Sarah Kuteh was fired from the hospital where she had worked for nearly a decade because she spoke with patients about her faith, passed out Bibles, and sang hymns on the job. Last month, a UK court rejected Kuteh’s most recent appeal.
“The Respondent employer did not have a blanket ban on religious speech at the workplace,” according to the court of appeals ruling. “What was considered to be inappropriate was for the Claimant [Kuteh] to initiate discussions about religion and for her to disobey a lawful instruction given to her by management.”
Kuteh is the latest in a string of cases of Christian medical workers in the UK who faced punishment for sharing their faith at work. Her lawyers at the Christian Legal Centre are considering further action as questions continue to come up around the appropriate place for religious expression in healthcare—particularly when a sizable number of patients indicate they welcome spiritual care from their providers.
The uproar around Kuteh initially broke in June 2016, when a cancer patient complained about what he characterized as her “very bizarre” behavior. The patient said Kuteh “told him that the only way he could get to the Lord was through Jesus,” and that she would give him a Bible if he didn’t have one.
Court documents also allege that Kuteh, a Pentecostal Christian, encouraged the patient to sing along as she sang Psalm 23 and that she held his hand tightly as she prayed an “intense” prayer that went “on and on.” On a hospital form, the patient had checked “open-minded” when asked about his religious beliefs. But in describing Kuteh’s actions to the court, he likened her evangelism to a Monty Python skit.
Little more than two months after the incident, adjudicators had concluded that Kuteh’s conduct violated Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) rules, and she was fired for gross misconduct. Despite Kuteh’s initial pushback, an employment tribunal upheld her dismissal, though she was allowed to practice nursing again after a year of restrictions.
In subsequent proceedings, it was discovered that Kuteh had a pattern of sharing her faith bedside. On other occasions, a patient said she “spent more time talking about religion than doing the assessment,” reportedThe Telegraph. She was accused of “preaching” by another patient.
Read the rest of the story at Christianity Today.
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