Piper, Julia and me.

To Julia Baird:

I was pleased to read your critical mention of John Piper in today's SMH article. Despite, or maybe because of many years in Anglican churches, I have become very wary of the Calvinist program (or maybe it's neo-Calvinist) that runs in the diocese. Moreover, the casting of the church family into an 'authority' structure is the start of the social error and the misreading of scripture that abounds in the Sydney view of male-female relationships. To think that in the equality and  mutuality of marriage there is a 'leader' is abhorrent and contrary to the tenor of Paul's corpus (when one puts aside the 'authority' lens).

Some of the work on the Christians for Biblical Equality website I've found fruitful in my thinking in this area, and would hope that it would penetrate the minds of the blokes who serve in the diocese...I wish they primarily characterised their activity as 'serving' as well, and not 'leading', which it is not.

BTW, a critique of Piper. I'm not vouching for it, and might not agree with everything (yada yada), but there it is. Here's another, same proviso.