What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Affirmation of a Transgender Person

    There’s yet more debate online about people calling for a special service to be approved by the Church of England in order to recognise and support someone following their transition from one gender to another.

    I happen to think that it would be an interesting thing for the Church of England to consider. However, we’re lucky in Scotland that we’ve already agreed a form of service that could be used as an affirmation for transgender people.

    Here are some of the prayers:

    THE LAYING ON OF HANDS
    The president says
    God of mercy and love,
    new birth by water and the Spirit is your gift,
    a gift none can take away;
    grant that your servants may grow
    into the fullness of the stature of Christ.
    Fill them with the joy of your presence.
    Increase in them the fruit of your Spirit:
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of love, patience and gentleness,
    the spirit of wonder and true holiness.
    The president lays hands on the candidate in silence, and then says
    Come, Creator Spirit,
    rekindle in N. your gifts of grace,
    to love and serve as a disciple of Christ.
    Amen.

    Renew her/his life in Christ
    and bring to completion all that your calling has begun.
    Amen.

    Either continuing the laying on of hands, or anointing the candidate
    with the Oil of Chrism, the president says:

    Empower your disciple, N.,
    to bring life to the world.
    Amen.

    At the conclusion of the laying on of hands
    the president says
    Living God, sustain all your people
    to be hope and strength to the world;
    through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
    to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
    be honour and glory, now and for ever.
    Amen

    The congregation share communion.

    The president addresses the congregation:

    The light of Christ is within you. Shine as a light in the world.
    As the seed grows secretly in the earth,
    As the yeast rises in the dough,
    May the power of God be at work in us.
    Like a city on a hill,
    Like a lamp in the darkness,
    May we witness to the glory of the kingdom.

    It seems to me that as we’ve already agreed these prayers, there’s going to be no fuss about it at all in Scotland whereas there might be in Englandshire. I’d be very happy to conduct this service for anyone who has completed their gender transition and who wants to express their faith publicly in their new identity.

    The great news is that the service is available to cis people at moments when they want to express publicly the renewal of their faith too. Indeed, some of these prayers were used at a particular point in my own life when I came into ministry in St Mary’s nine years ago. We don’t discriminate and so this service is available for all God’s children whether they are trans or not.

    The service can be found online here:
    http://www.scotland.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/affirmation-of-holy-baptism-2006.pdf

    , ,

10 responses to “Advertise, advertise, advertise!”

  1. Matt Hanson Avatar
    Matt Hanson

    Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

    Matt Hanson

    Reply
  2. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    How naff can you get? It was worth listening to a professional advertiser’s comments on the Lichfield advert on the Sunday programme on Radio 4.

    Reply
  3. Gavin Drake Avatar
    Gavin Drake

    Adverts that make people in the church feel comfortable are likely to be completely irrelevant to people outside the church. As the instigator and creator of the Lichfield football adverts campaign I stand by them – they did what we wanted them to do. We had a target and we achieved that target. The professional advertising chap on Radio Four was anti the adverts; but he was also anti the entire Christian message as a self-proclaimed militant atheist. His best effort? “Life” – which is a campaign he created for the Billy Graham missions 20 years ago. Hardly creative (now, 20 years on) nor fresh. His message was that the church should get rid of Jesus, God and all the “after life” stuff and concentrate on making people feel good now.

    One final thought, in this blog entry aren’t you demonstrating the Christian Christmas grumpetyness which you appear to be criticising in others?

    Reply
  4. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    Thanks for your comments Gavin.

    You are quite right about my grumpityness though I was not particularly being critical of it in others. Indeed, being able to rely on other people’s grumpityness is one of the things which has ensured a lot of exposure for the CAN ads, for example, the Bad Hair Day campaign and the Meek, Mild As If one. It was the (mock?) outrage of the christian community that got those ads talked about.

    I’m a fan of what the CAN do, which I perhaps did not make clear in the above blog entry.

    I’d be interested to know what the target was and how achieving it was measured.

    I have to confess to feeling embarrassed by the Lichfield ad but then of course, it was not aimed at me.

    I also commented about past CAN campaigns here and here.

    Reply
  5. Kennedy Avatar
    Kennedy

    Having listened to the CAN adverts, I am left asking what the message was and who was the target audience? If the intention was to familiarise the audience with the characters and motifs from the Christmas story then OK, but there is more that could be said in the time.

    You’ll permit me a small plug for the stuff that GRF produce.

    Have a listen:

    http://smallvoice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/01-ms-christianity.mp3

    Yes, this uses the style of the M&S ads but I think that it communicates something about the Christian message and in a form that a non-church person could relate to.

    The judges at the Jerusalem Awards seemed to like it as they awarded it the premier award in the ‘Shorts’ category at their awards ceremony last week.

    If you are looking for creative audio to use in churches or schools then have a look at http://www.audiopot.org.

    Kennedy

    Reply
  6. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    Thanks Kennedy. I like the M and S Ad. Very clever. I always like hearing Albatross (the music underneath) because it reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago who used to play it (on large pipe organs) during communion.

    One of the drawbacks of the ads that I was speaking about above is that they all depend on knowing the Christian story. That is perhaps legitimate in a Back to Church Sunday as it is presumably aimed at folk who have gone away knowing something or other.

    The line about the penalty does kind of imply that substitutionary atonement is what we believe though.

    The Lichfield ad certainly got a lot of coverage and if that was the intention, it succeeded.

    Reply
  7. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    I must admit I found the racing advert amusing. The football ones leave me cold. Aside from issue about inclusivity and dubious theology, I think living in Glasgow has made me very wary of any connection between religion and football.

    Reply
  8. Coxy Avatar
    Coxy

    I think that the football one is excellent, as does my wife (and she can’t tell the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal – I guess they do both play in red though!). How is it not inclusive of men and women? As I see it there is good build up play from Mary and Joseph before Jesus scores…

    Reply
  9. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    Hi Nick

    I’ve just rescued your comment from a spam filter – don’t know why it got swallowed.

    At St Mary’s we tend to avoid language like “men” where what is really meant is men and women, “mankind” when what is meant really is humanity etc

    This affects things like the language we use for hymns.

    We’d never sing, “Brothers, this Lord Jesus, shall return again” for example. In a mixed crowd it just seems rude.

    There is an ongoing degate about how far to go with this policy but by and large, language inclusive of men and women is the norm at St Mary’s and exclusive language tends to jar and be distractive when you’ve got used to more inclusive language in church. Thus the ad is something we couldn’t use because of the use of the word “man” meaning something other than just men.

    Reply
  10. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    The term “banter”, as featured in the ad, should also be used by no-one anyway (and only partly because of Chewing the Fat). O the amount of people that have endured abuse and had it expained away as “just banter”.

    Wondering if “male” ads like this are ok if one also does female-centered advertising, or if the whole idea is hoary sexism. St.Silas does a Women 4 Women thing which I believe is popular. No Men 4 Men though.

    Hope I’m immune from the st.silasite ensnaring spam filter
    ;-).

    Reply

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