Few will recall the previous name change for the Association in 1950 to the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Scripture Readers Association (SASRA). Seventy-three years on and we are making the slight alteration, changing Airmen to Aviator. In upholding its equality, diversity and inclusion policy, the RAF has removed gender-specific terms like airmen in favour of what in modern English are considered gender-neutral terms, in this case aviator.
As a Christian military charity, our Scripture Readers are allowed access to service personnel through maintaining Army and RAF agreements and sponsorship by their Chaplaincies. We must, therefore, abide by specific policies and directives.
In this instance, that has meant changing our name slightly, but in so doing, we retain higher military command support for access to our mission field. As we transition in name, it would be helpful and convenient to use ‘SASRA’ for such as donations or purchases by cheques and the like.
