In this video, Rosaria Butterfield defines herself as an “Unlikely Convert”, and unpacks the matters that previously caused her to reject faith in Christ. Despite the numerous ways in which Rosaria Butterfield disqualified herself from converting to Christianity, the Lord still captured her heart. Prior to her conversion, most individuals would have thought of Rosaria Butterfield as someone in direct opposition to Christianity. She was someone who appeared as though she could not be further from Biblical Truth. Yet, throughout this video, Rosaria Butterfield demonstrates the Lord’s sovereign will over her life as she became enamored with him despite any extraneous hindrances.
- The Struggle to Believe
- Distaste for Christians
- Worldly Lifestyle
Why Rosaria Butterfield Calls Herself An “Unlikely Convert”
Well, I felt like I had already thought through matters of faith and had rejected the Bible’s authority. I felt strongly that the Bible itself was just oral history, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t trust a chocolate chip cookie recipe rooted in oral history. I also found it to be heavily moralistic, confusingly arbitrary about laws and rules and customs, appalling in its gender politics, and offensive in its statements about slavery. And at best, I thought the Bible was a cultural artifact. In addition to that, I found Christians to be sour and anti-intellectual, and unpleasant and unfriendly. And quite frankly, Christians just seemed like people who are very happy to live on a sort of starvation diet of ideas and community.
To top it all off, I was living in serially monogamous lesbian relationships. I had co-authored the first domestic partnership policy at Syracuse University, and I quite frankly, could not understand why Christians would not leave consenting adults alone. And so my post-tenure book was going to be an examination of Christianity from a lesbian feminist perspective because I wanted to explore some of these ideas of the way that attacks the Bible interfaces with culture. So all of that I thought would probably make me a pretty unlikely convert.
Rosaria Butterfield is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015). Her new book is The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018).
