Thoughts on "Hey John, Is My Femininity Showing?"
The offending podcast is here.
The way I'm reading it goes like this.
The basics
- John Piper is a Complementarian
- He believes that men should be the leaders in the home and church and further...
- women should not be in spiritual leadership positions over men.
The question the podcast answers the question: Can men use commentaries written by women?
The logic:
- Piper doesn't have a problem reading spiritual material written by women
- Piper does have a problem with a woman sitting in spiritual authority over a man, whether in a church, or seminary class.
- Therefore: the mere presence of a female body (in general) is offensive to John Piper.
Apparently, most egalitarians don't see the distinction between reading a book (sitting and gathering information) and sitting under teaching authority.
You don't submit to a book, you do submit to a teacher.
You can put a book down, you can give it away, throw it away, burn it...you can't do those things to a teaching authority. You can get yourself out from under the authority, but as long as you're in that class, you're under authority.
I understand that it's not the body parts, it's the authority. Piper makes that clear when he says, "whereas if she were standing right in front of me and teaching me as my shepherd< /strong>…I couldn’t make that separation"
This is not the voice of "femininity" - it's the voice of worldly feminism (which is antithetical to femininity.) It's the brand of feminism that cannot tolerate dissension, cannot respect differing viewpoints and must tear down those who disagree.
So Rachel, don't worry...it's not your femininity that's showing.