Tag: Discipleship

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.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe, 1719.

A voluminous writer who has been hailed alternately as English’s first novelist and the language’s greatest hack, Daniel Defoe wrote this wildly popular tale of isolation in 1719, just before he turned 60. Defoe adapted the true account of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who had lived alone on a remote island for four-and-a-half years and whose exploits had been recorded in “true histories” prior to the novel’s publication. In this the 300 anniversary of the novel, it’s worth noting that Defoe’s book remains staggeringly popular, with too many cultural adaptations (think of Swiss Family Robinson or the film Castaway) to count. The book has given many an economist a fictional representative to help explain a host of basic principles like consumer goods or capital goods in the pursuit of capital accumulation. In it, you can find the very roots of the novel, the dominant literary form of the past 300 years. You can also read the book as a story of redemption and resurrection, one that foregrounds physical isolation and the desire for physical rescue as a way of getting at the human need for spiritual deliverance. I recommend the novel as a seminal volume of English literature, one that shows how close the roots of the English novel are to spiritual autobiography.