Butterfield, Rosaria Champagne. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 2012.
Formerly a Syracuse University tenured-professor of English and queer feminist activist, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield tells the story of her tumultuous conversion to Christianity and her sanctification as the wife of a minister and mother to adopted children of different races. As churches debate how to respond to both their LGBTQ neighbors and proponents inside the church, Butterfield has found herself a poster woman for Christians who believe scripture condemns the expression of same-sex desire. In this book, Butterfield does not rehearse that debate’s typical discussion points. She doesn’t discuss the origins of her same-sex desire (i.e. whether or not she was “born this way”), approve or condemn conversion therapy, or give her views on the various political issues surrounding gay marriage. Butterfield doesn’t even recount her childhood or give many details about the lesbian relationship she was in when she came to Christ. The book’s title is important. Butterfield hasn’t written The Secret Story of an Unlikely Convert. Neither, I presume, would her thoughts about a variety of political and cultural issues be “secret” since that’s what everyone would expect her to write about. Instead, she’s provided a testimony that is, at minimum, sixty percent about the difficult sanctification process that follows conversion. I recommend this book as a great starting place to consider with prayer and humility what it is we’re actually praying for when we ask God to save those who do not know Him.
Only God can convert us.
The book’s first chapter details the origins of her conversion and the collapse of her professional success. Butterfield had tenure at a major university, which entailed writing a book and a half-dozen articles in her area of specialization,19th Century Literature and Culture. She was an administrator in her department, and an activist in the community. She was hard at work on her next research project, a takedown of the Christian right, when she wrote an op-ed attacking the gender politics of the Promise Keepers movement. She received lots of letters in the wake of the piece, and one of them in particular caught her eye: it was from a Reformed Presbyterian minister who asked her in a loving way to consider the underlying beliefs—the presuppositions—for her arguments. As part of her research, she decided to have dinner with the pastor and his wife. This meal led not to an immediate church invitation or gospel message but to friendship. Soon enough, Butterfield assented to hearing the pastor’s sermon on why the Bible was the most crucial book an English major could read. After two years of Bible reading, prayer ,and struggle, she began attending church and actively seeking to obey God’s commands with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Butterfield makes it clear that God directed the process. She asked for the desire to have the desire to change, an Augustinian prayer indeed. In doing so, she does not articulate what exactly happened to her same-sex desire, short of saying that she recognized it as sin and that God removed it from her life as she progressed in her faith. She emphasizes two biblical passages in her diagnosis of how the church handles the issue of homosexuality. The first is from Ezekiel 16. God reveals that Sodom’s sin is less offensive than Jerusalem’s. The citizens of Jerusalem know the reality of God’s goodness and can only respond in pride. They lack mercy, discipline, and modesty. Butterfield points out that sin is often progressive and hints that same-sex desire is often linked to desires for autonomy that are rooted in pride. The second passage Butterfield brings up comes from Matthew 11 where Jesus condemns Capernaum for rejecting signs that, if they had been presented in Sodom, would have redeemed its citizens. Butterfield argues, “God is more greatly grieved by the sins of those who claim to know him than by those who know him not.” One of the sins Butterfield mentions is the restrictive opinions developed by evangelical culture which make it difficult for any diversity to take root. Another is the pride that comes with thinking our Bible-thumping witness or short-instructional prayers are enough to save people. The world can only be saved “through him” (John 3:17).
Conversion is tumultuous.
To me, the book’s most haunting line is this one from the end of Chapter 1: “I sometimes wonder, when I hear other Christians pray for the salvation of the ‘lost,’ if they realize that this comprehensive chaos is the desired end of such prayers.” Butterfield did not immediately become a church member, find ways of reconciling her newfound faith with her work, or see her old relationships redeemed. She tells us nothing about an exciting revival in the gay community following her conversion. She was considered a traitor by her lover, comrades, students, and colleagues.
Butterfield calls Paul her “brother and kindred spirit.” She is right to note that Paul’s life post-conversion was filled with not only hardships stemming from the people in the Jewish community who he had betrayed but from the Romans who were no more fond of his newfound Christianity than the adherents of Judaism. Butterfield was engaged to a man who later admitted he was not a Christian, and her sojourns in Pennsylvania among various Christian communities challenged her faith. Yet, just as Paul counted his sufferings as having little merit in comparison with Christ, Butterfield found, in the midst of her pain, pastors who convicted her, church members who nurtured her, and a companion who provided her with godly intimacy.
The sanctification that follows conversion is best worked out in worship and service.
One of the strangest features of the book comes in Chapter 3 where Butterfield takes an extended detour down doctrine lane. Her denomination, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, only sings acapella songs that are melodic renderings of the Psalms. This denominational distinctive comes from “the regulative principle of worship,” which Butterfield connects to a vital Protestant doctrine, Sola Scriptura. Despite Butterfield’s profession before her conversion, we do not get her extended readings of novels or poems as illustrations of her plight. Instead, we get lengthy argumentation for a doctrine that will strike even the most conservative evangelicals as too extreme. No U2 guitar sure, but no instruments at all? No contemporary worship songs sure, but no “Amazing Grace”? At its core, Butterfield’s point is about worship and the role the church has to take liberties with how God should be praised. That is, she implicitly connects worship to another issue where the church is having to debate opponents about whether or not changes to culture affect scripture: sexuality. Though she never says so explicitly, I think she’s asking her audience to be honest about their commitment to scripture in all things. I do not think her evidence is convincing, but her underlying commitment is—the desire to have God’s word regulate the way we worship Him.
If worship is one place where sanctification works itself out in the convert’s life, the other is service. Butterfield only intensified her commitment to community when she found Christ. While before her kindness extended to animals, now her home is a shelter for foster children abused by their caretakers and often victims of a brutal system. The work she describes doing with her husband for his initial church plant trumps the work I’ve seen performed by anyone, and I say this as the son of one of the most generous moms/church members I know. When you add the home that Butterfield and her husband have provided for numerous children—both adopted and temporary—you may be as convicted as I was about what living out Christ’s call to love our neighbors really looks like. Crucial to Butterfield’s heart for her neighbors is her insistence that we cannot save people. Because she came to God through the kindness and patience of a pastor and his wife, she had a model for what this tiring but crucial work looks like.
It’s probably best to read this as Butterfield’s progressive reflection on her journey, not as one coherent statement.
Parts of the book appear contradictory. For example in Chapter 4, Butterfield laments a college student’s quick judgment of public schools. “She was so accustomed to being around like-minded people that she slipped,” Butterfield writes. In Chapter 5, Butterfield contrasts her homeschooled elementary school age son’s grasp of grammar with his public school friend’s grasp of “blossoming sexual desire.” She quickly tells us in a one-sentence paragraph, “There is no question in my mind which grammar I want to teach in grammar school.” That is, most of the fifth chapter appears to be an apology for the Classical Conversations curriculum and, at least implicitly, a condemnation of the public schools her student slipped in condemning. Butterfield appears to be guilty of the qualities she finds wanting in the “conservative Christian community.”
The essays might best be approached as statements of God’s work in her life during the years contained in each chapter title rather than the past as comprised by a cool, collective Butterfield ca. 2012. The book already consists of different texts. Butterfield presents in full a talk she gave at Syracuse in 1999 to new graduate students. She even gives us the sermon preached at her marriage. As she admits, finding time to write is harder now that she’s a full-time dedicated homeschool mom. Still, Butterfield’s gifts as an interpreter and wielder of language are on full display. God is using her mightily, and she continues to grow closer to him.