SOUTHWARK Church has been integral to the South Bank around London Bridge since the time of King Alfred. It has seen Christianity in most of its Western guises: the kindly late medieval Catholicism of the Augustinian Canons, founders of St Thomas’ Hospital, the revolutionary Presbyterianism of the Commonwealth with Bunyan preaching and, on this Sunday in 2004, the radical zeal of Canon Jeffery John, preaching with biting intelligence on the equality of women within Christianity.

My wife is a former worshipper at Holy Trinity Brompton and so is used to guitars and happy clappiness — rather than the slow processions and drifting incense of the English cathedral rite. She almost managed to sabotage the service by leaving our baby Andrew’s pram right in front of the advancing procession of clergy. After a scramble, Andrew and pram were lifted clear of the looming crucifix and the gently smoking censer by helpful and gentle ushers. Andrew and James were then settled happily into the excellent crèche.

Dressed in the rich green vestments that precede Lent, the president processed by with the full complement of clergy, the gospel held aloft wrapped in green, and the slow, steady click of the thurible on its silver chain, puffing incense. I breathed deeply and felt the effects of the London traffic, and of managing little James and Andrew, easing away.

The Responsorial Psalm picked up the healing theme: “you still the raging seas . . . and the clamour of the peoples”. The reading, proclaimed from the middle of the nave from the green cloth gospel, flanked by the crucifer, was of Jesus calming the storm in Luke. The service, despite its elaborate formality, was carried with great good humour and warmth, and the Peace was exchanged with easy smiles and without any awkwardness.

The Old Testament reading was of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib. Canon Jeffery John took this as the base of a sermon of piercing intelligence, passion and good humour. He took three ancient and oft-repeated theological arguments for the subservience of woman: her creation from a part of Adam, her creation after Adam and her named status as “helper”, and deftly turned them on their logical heads. If being made later than something makes a thing inferior to it, is Adam lower than water? If being made from something makes you subservient to it, is Adam subordinate to dust? If Eve’s title “helper” is a lower-grade term, why is it used 15 times of God, and why does Jesus present himself as servant helper?

Whatever one’s view on the Jeffery John affair, these are cogent and demanding arguments: strong intellectual coffee for a Sunday morning.

Preparing the altar was done with an entrancingly focused calm, the blue bright incense curling round the steady white yellow flame of the altar candle. The snap of the Eucharistic bread echoed in the high stone vaults: “He took bread . . . He broke it and gave it to his disciples.” The censer clicked like a metronome measuring out the silence of the service.

EVENT: Service at Southwark Cathedral, London SE1

CELEBRANT: Canon Jeffrey John

ARCHITECTURE: The Cathedral Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, to give it its official name, was built between 1220 and 1420. Surrounded now by warehouses and dominated by a railway viaduct, it is the oldest Gothic building in London

SERMON: Just because Man was created before Woman, that does not make him superior

SPIRITUAL HIGH: The intoxicating intellectual discourse

AFTER-SERVICE CARE: Tea, coffee, chocolate, wine and good company