Washing and styling hair might have the significance of a religious ritual for most women. But that was not enough to appease Britain’s advertising watchdog, which has censured a hair styling company for causing “serious offence” to Christians after it ran a television campaign based on the Lord’s Prayer.

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned the television advertisements after the company Jemella, that trades as Ghd, used “erotic” images of women combined with with the text, “thy will be done,” to promote a heated hair styler.

In one scene, a woman wearing lingerie sat on the edge of a bed with rosary-style beads clasped in her hands and prayed in Italian: “May my new curls make her feel choked with jealousy.”

Large on-screen text stated “ghd IV thy Will Be Done,” with the letter “t” appearing as a cross. On-screen text then stated "ghd. A new religion for hair".

Another showed a woman lying on a bed, with her thoughts in Swedish and printed on the screen: “May my flirty flicks puncture the heart of every man I see.”

A third showed a woman carrying a votive candle through to her bedroom before looking upwards and praying: “Make him dump her tonight and come home with me.”

The advertisement prompted complaints from the Archdeacon of Liverpool, the Ven Ricky Panter, and 22 other members of the public who claimed the images were offensive to the Christian faith.

Mr Panter told The Times last night: “It seemed to me the advertisement crossed a line. I felt very uncomfortable with it. It was targeting the Lord’s Prayer and I felt it was taking the mick. This is not about censorship or about being prudish. It is simply about every individual’s right to signal when they think a line has been crossed.”

Jemella told the ASA they had not intended to cause offence and claimed that the advertisements were intended to show a deeply held wish by a girl and her expression of a response to that wish. They said that the use of the word “thy” was to add drama and weight to the intensity of the girl’s wishes.

They also pointed out that they had used the strapline “a new religion for hair” for the past seven years without censure.

The decision has disappointed advertisers because the ASA has previously failed to uphold complaints about the same company’s use of the phrase “thou shalt convert”.

The advertising clearance organisation Clearcast, which had approved this and previous Jemella campaigns, claimed the advertisements did not seek to mock any particular religion and contained language that had been used by Ghd for the past seven years.

The ASA decided however that the devotion to hair prayer depicted in the advertisements went too far.

“The women in the ads appeared to be in prayer,” the ASA said in its ruling. “Their hands were clasped and they were looking upwards towards the sky. One was holding a votive candle and another was holding a set of beads that resembled rosary beads. We also noted the images of the women in their bedrooms, some of them in their underwear and others on their beds, were presented in a way that could be seen to be erotic”

The ASA concluded that “the eroticised images of the women apparently in prayer, in conjunction with religious symbols such as the votive candle and the rosary beads, the use of the phrase ‘thy will be done’ from the Lord's Prayer and the image of the letter t as the Cross of Jesus, were likely to cause serious offence, particularly to Christians.”

Kristoffer Hammer of Clearcast said: “We have expressed our disappointment with the adjudication. We looked into all aspects of this when we considered it for clearance. We thought on balance the advertisement was acceptable.”

The advertisement is still running on YouTube and on the company’s own website. The industry is at present debating how it can regulate new media. A spokesman for the ASA said: “If consumers want to stop the ad appearing on a company’s website then, in the first instance, we recommend that they contact them directly.”