Kenneth Oram
|
The Right Reverend Kenneth Cyril Oram |
|
|---|---|
| Church | Anglican |
| Province | Southern Africa |
| Diocese | Grahamstown |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1943 |
| Consecration | 1974 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 3 March 1919 |
| Died | 7 January 2001 (aged 81) |
| Signature |  |
Kenneth Cyril Oram AKC (3 March 1919 – 7 January 2001) was an Anglican clergyman who served as Dean of Kimberley and of Grahamstown before his elevation to the episcopacy as Bishop of Grahamstown, 1974 to 1987.
Oram was educated at Selhurst Grammar School and King's College London where he studied English and became an Associate of King's College. He was ordained deacon in 1942, he preached his maiden sermon at Cranbrook on 6 June 1942. Oram was ordained priest, in the Diocese of Canterbury, in 1943. In the same year he married Kathleen Malcolm.
After the war Oram responded to an appeal by the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to serve abroad, and thus began his ministry in South Africa. He went out to the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman - which covered a vast area including, at that time, the southern half of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Under Bishop John Hunter he was appointed initially as Rector of St Luke's Church, Prieska, and Director of Prieska Mission District (1949–51), and subsequently as Rector of Mafeking (St John's), 1952-59. He served as Archdeacon of Bechuanaland from 1953 to 1959.
Cyprian Thorpe, in an obituary, relates that while Oram was no linguist, he nevertheless learned enough Afrikaans, Setswana and isiXhosa to conduct services in those languages in the rural areas and townships where they were spoken. His musicality "undoubtedly helped him to pronounce the languages ... He was a church organist from the age of 15 and even produced Gilbert and Sullivan operettas amongst his Afrikaans-speaking congregations in the remote towns of the Northern Cape."
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