Day 83 of MUC and day 36 of MOC, and walking past the Tower of Babel reminds the pond of Adam, Eve, and the way complimentary women can become equitable companions ...

Every so often the pond gets nostalgic for the good old days when Jensenists ran the Anglicans and the Pellists strutted in the Sunday Terror ...

Those days are long gone, though the pond's walks frequently take it past the building of the Anglican Tower of Babel at the northern end of King Street in Newtown ...

     

Sorry, it's a little hard to pick them apart, the pond always gets mightily confused ...

Never mind, after a walk yesterday and a chance to catch up on the exciting progress at Babel, the pond couldn't resist a visit to the Sydney Anglican site where Jensenists once ruled the roost.

After all, such is the boredom with the election campaign that only one tree-killer Sunday paper led with the election this day - the Sun-Herald, and that with a marginal seats poll which will be as irrelevant as a can of soda that's lost its fizz by lunchtime ...

Oh sure there's Peta and there's Miranda the Devine in the Sunday Terror, but the pond was compelled by a newcomer to the angry Sydney Anglicans ...

Now ostensibly the subject was the right of humans to kill gorillas - and who can argue with that? The pond loves a little gorilla killing on the weekend. There's nothing like the slaughter of animals and the gutters running red with animal blood to invigorate the soul.

But what charmed and entranced the pond was the way that scribbler (and pastor) Stuart Starr from a brand new church in Oran Park seized the branding opportunity by reverting to the first book in the bible.

Now the Catholic church long ago accepted that Genesis contained plenty of myths, useful for the persecution of women, but not much else.

But the angry Anglicans love their old Testament - as in Glenn Davies' blathering on about rainbows in Visible mercy.

What excited the pond was that Starr had discovered a new word, a new way of putting women in their place.

It takes a little time, and first we must do a detour through some fine dominionist thinking. 

The logic unfolds ...

The pond can't get enough of this sort of stuff on a meditative Sunday, and now we've established the dominionist caper, and contemplated the transcendent dignity and worth of God's image bearers - on view in a couple of world wars and sundry holocausts doing a Noah, we can move forward ...

Now apart from the refusal to quote at length from the King James version - it seems tradition and heritage means nothing to these modern angry Anglicans - what a delightful reading of the biblical constitution, whereby naming each creature can be extended to the notion that humans are to work and care for the garden.

Why if naming is all it takes, the pond's got one word for that. Mynah birds! Or should it be "first kill all the mynah birds!"

Not to worry, the thing that got the pond really excited was the notion that Eve would be "truly an equitable companion."

Equitable.

What an exciting word.

Now the notoriously angry Sydney Anglicans have long got into trouble for their devoted addiction to the notion of complementarianism.

Some women object to the notion of being a complimentary afterthought, a bit like a decorative bag of nibbles handed out by Virgin to prove they can be as vile as Qantas ...

Equitable is surely the new way forward. Can we have a second mention please?

Equitable companions! Dominionists together.

But who would rule the roost in this equitable companionship?

It forced the pond to race off to the dictionary to see what it might all mean ...

1. Showing or characterized by equity; just and fair. 
2. Law a. Of or relating to rights historically enforced in courts of equity. 
b. Resolved not simply according to the strict letter of the law but in accordance with principles of substantial justice and the unique facts of the case. 
3. impartial or reasonable; fair; just: an equitable decision.
4. (Law) law relating to or valid in equity, as distinct from common law or statute law 
5. (Law) law (formerly) recognized in a court of equity only, as claims, rights, etc

[French équitable, from Old French, from equite, equity; see equity.] (more here).

And the thesaurus offered a few more examples:

equitable - fair to all parties as dictated by reason and conscience; "equitable treatment of all citizens"; "an equitable distribution of gifts among the children" 
fair, just - free from favoritism or self-interest or bias or deception; conforming with established standards or rules; "a fair referee"; "fair deal"; "on a fair footing"; "a fair fight"; "by fair means or foul" just - used especially of what is legally or ethically right or proper or fitting; 
"a just and lasting peace"- A.Lincoln; "a kind and just man"; "a just reward"; "his just inheritance" impartial - showing lack of favoritism; "the cold neutrality of an impartial judge"

Phew, for a moment there, the pond though equitable companions might just be meaningless blather, but that last bit of the thesaurus shows what it really means - no, not that bit about an equitable distribution of gifts among the children, though really that's what it sometimes feels like when your average Sydney Anglican has to deal with his vexatious complimentary women ...

No, it was that last satisfying bit about the cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

The pond understood immediately: your average Eve should sit demurely and accept the cold neutrality of an impartial angry Sydney Anglican Adamistic judge ...let there be dominion over animals and women ...

One of the pond's favourite lines in the Bible, King James version of course, is much quoted ...

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It would possibly help the citizens of Oran Park if the angry Sydney Anglicans could at some near future time put away their addiction to the old Testament, Adam and Eve in particular, the Genesis myth, camel- and goat-herding derived nonsense that it is, and with it all the wretched accompanying guff about complimentary women.

Dressing it up as' equitable companionship' just makes a nonsense of a decent hard-working word trying to make a fair average living in the legal and social justice dictionary.

And so to a final burst of nostalgia. Was it only last Sunday that the pond was walking amongst a sea of black in Smith street?

Oh to be cast out of Valhalla, Eden if you insist, but the pond came away with a reminder that there's an upside for dominionism, even for hipsters ...