Last Sunday, the bishop confirmed four members of my congregation. It was a wonderful occasion. “God has called you by name and made you his own,” he said, quoting from the prophet Isaiah, as he laid his hands upon each of their heads. During his sermon, he focused in on being called by our own name. God’s love is specific, aimed directly at who we are. It is not some generalised blanket beneficence wafted roughly in the direction of humankind.
So you can see the dilemma that confronted the Rev Chris Newlands, the vicar of Lancaster Priory. A parishioner came to see him, asking to be re-baptised. He explained that the Church of England doesn’t do this – that baptism is a once only kind of thing. But I was baptised as a girl, the parishioner explained. Now I am a man. My name is Harry. This was the conversation that set Chris Newlands off on the course of trying to get the C of E to authorise a service for those transitioning from one gender identity to another. If God has called us all by name, it would be good if He got the name right. And so last month the diocese of Blackburn agreed, by an overwhelming majority, to ask the General Synod to debate the introduction of services of welcome specifically for those transitioning gender.
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