Christian teacher fired for offering to pray for sick pupil

December 21, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

A Christian teacher fears she may never work again after she was sacked for offering to pray for a sick pupil.

Distraught: Olive Jones said her dismissal 'was like a bad dream that had come true'

www.dailymail.co.uk

Olive Jones, 54, said she had been made to feel like a criminal, and claimed that Christians were being persecuted due to ‘political correctness’.

Mrs Jones, who taught children not well enough to attend school, said that after she raised the topic of prayer during a visit to a 12-year-old’s house, the girl’s mother lodged a complaint.

Just hours later, said Mrs Jones, her boss told her she would no longer be working for Oak Hill Short Stay School and Tuition Service, in Nailsea, Somerset.

She said managers had ruled her comments could be perceived as ‘bullying’.

Mrs Jones had told the girl and her mother that there were people praying for them. She said: ‘I asked the child if I could pray for her. She looked at her mother, who said, “We come from a family who do not believe”, so I did not pray.’

Mrs Jones, who has two sons -one a Royal Marine, the other a student – said of her dismissal: ‘I’ve been left devastated. I don’t know if I will be able to go back to teaching in the same role. It would be very difficult.

A spokesman for North Somerset Council, said: ‘A complaint has been made by a parent. This complaint is being investigated.’

Mrs Jones’ dismissal has outraged Christian groups, who say new equality regulations are driving Christianity to the margins of society.

They said the case echoed that of community nurse Caroline Petrie, who was suspended last December after offering to pray for a patient but who was later reinstated after a national outcry.

Coincidentally, Mrs Petrie lives nearby and has been a friend of Mrs Jones for some years.

Speaking at her home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, Mrs Jones said: ‘Teaching was my dream from the age of 16. It is as if 20 years of my work, which I was passionate about, has gone. It is like a grief.

‘I have been sleeping badly and been in a daze. I haven’t even got around to putting up a Christmas tree or decorations. So much for Christmas cheer.’

Mrs Jones shares her comfortable four-bedroom house with her husband Peter, who is also a teacher and heads the maths department at a local state secondary school.

The house provides few clues about her strong beliefs. There is a small wooden cross on one wall, a few plaques carrying religious texts, and some Bibles in the sitting room which she used in her studies for a diploma at the Pentecostal Carmel Bible College in Bristol.

She is a regular churchgoer, attending her local Church of England church most Sundays, but she also occasionally opts for more lively evangelical worship at the college.

After training to be a teacher at Aberystwyth University, where she met her husband, and a period bringing up her children – student Rob, 24, and soldier James, 23 – she returned to teaching in state secondary schools and sixth-form colleges. Read more…