Rosaria Butterfield

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (born 1962) is a writer, speaker, homemaker, and former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University.

Career

Butterfield, who earned her Ph.D. from Ohio State University in English Literature, served in the English Department and Women's Studies Program at Syracuse University from 1992 to 2002. During her academic career, she published the book ''The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory'' as well as many scholarly articles. Her academic interest was focused on feminist theory, queer theory and 19th century British literature. She was awarded tenure in 1999, the same year that she converted to Christianity. She married in 2001.

Autobiography

Growing up, Butterfield attended predominantly liberal Catholic schools. She is most widely known today for her autobiography ''The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into the Christian Faith'', in which she details her transformation from a postmodernist into a Bible-believing Christian. For nearly a decade, she lived as an openly lesbian activist. While researching the Religious Right and their "politics of hatred" against the queer community, she wrote an article criticizing the evangelical organization Promise Keepers. Ken Smith, the then-pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church, wrote to her regarding this article and invited her to dinner. Her subsequent friendship with the Smiths led to her re-evaluation of her presuppositions. Two years later, Butterfield converted to evangelical Christianity. Following her conversion, she developed a ministry to college students. She now frequently speaks at churches and universities about her experience. She has taught and ministered at Geneva College. She now lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband, Kent Butterfield, a pastor, and their children.

Theological views

Hospitality

In many of her books and interviews, Butterfield highlights what she calls "radically ordinary" Christian hospitality. Having been a beneficiary of the practice herself, she writes, "To me, hospitality is the ground zero of the Christian faith." She differentiates this from entertaining guests, saying that "In counterfeit hospitality, there is a very fixed relationship between host and guest. In Christian hospitality, it's a very fluid relationship." In an interview, she has stated that "In the past, hristianshave set heir boundariesaccording to heircheckbook and according to heircalendar. In a post-Christian world, we are called to set them according to the blood of Christ." Butterfield encourages Christians "to get close enough to put the hand of the stranger into the hand of the Savior,” and that "it hurts, and it's good. And the Lord equips." In her book ''The Gospel Comes with a House Key,'' she indicates that her hospitality is "not showy or fancy" and that parting with the idols of consumerism and sexual autonomy is essential to making room for other people.

Repentance

One of the hallmarks of Butterfield's writing is the emphasis on repentance. She points to examples of Puritans like Thomas Watson and John Owen, stating that the Puritans "knew how to hate their sin without hating themselves because they understood that Christ's grace is an ever-present Person, a Person who understands our situation and our needs better than we do." Citing Colossians 3:1 and 3:5, she writes, "Our call is not to despair, but to hope in Christ and to drive a fresh nail into our choice sin every day." In her autobiography, she writes, "repentance requires greater intimacy with God than with our sin. How much greater? About the size of a mustard seed. Repentance requires that we draw near to Jesus, no matter what. And sometimes we all have to crawl there on our hands and knees." Butterfield states that "repentance is the threshold to God" and that "good neighbors never put a stumbling block between a fellow image bearer and the God who made her." "If you love your neighbors," she writes, "you would never deny them this threshold."

She emphasizes that "God calls any heart that is not submitted to Jesus sinful," and that when Christians repent of their sin, they must repent from the root up. She writes that "sexual sin quickly transforms into sin of identity," and sees any identity that is formed apart from Christ as sinful.

Sexuality and Identity

Butterfield does not identify herself as "ex-gay" and believes that same-sex-attracted Christians should not identify as gay Christians since " e job of the adjective is to change the noun." Butterfield has criticized conversion therapy for contending that the "primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God's gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ's body and still struggle with sexual temptation." In the past, Butterfield had suggested that conversion therapy's fixation on "healing" homosexuals is a version of the prosperity gospel. However, she has since qualified this statement by clarifying that her critique applied to the type of counseling that prioritizes sanctification over justification.

Butterfield notes that Christian conversion "always comes in exchange for the life you once loved, not in addition to it," and that "Some hristianshave one cross, and others have ten to carry." Because of this reality, she states that the Church has a responsibility to be a family to believers "who live daily with unchosen homosexual desires hoalso live with a host of unanswered questions and unfulfilled life dreams." She maintains that while experiences are important, Christians must not base their epistemology on emotionalism or personal experience (a doctrinal error she calls " sola experiencia"), but rather base their identity on their union with Christ. According to Butterfield, Christians belong to one another and to one Father, and thereby get their identity and calling "from God's image radiating in and through hem"

As a former scholar of Freud, Butterfield identifies sexual orientation as a "19th-century invention" and a "category mistake" that goes against biblical anthropology by " aving usheredin a new measure of man, one for whom sexuality and sexual pleasure became a defining marker.” She holds that "gay may be how someone feels, but annever be who someone inherently is," and has chided the Side B movement for treating sexual orientation as an ontologically accurate category. According to her, Side B " oncedesthe moral language to the Left's understanding of identity politics rather than ffer abiblical understanding of morality and hope" and thus falsifies the gospel.

Despite previously having approved of using preferred pronouns of trans-identifying individuals, she has since retracted this position, saying that "By affirming a lie, ur actionencourages people ith gender dysphoriato break the tenth commandment .e. you shall not covet (your neighbor's anatomy)"

Publications

* ''Crimes of Reading: Incest and Censorship in Mary Shelley's Early Novels'' (Thesis, 1992)
* ''The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory'' (1996)
* ''The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into the Christian Faith'' (2012)
* ''Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ'' (2015)
* ''The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World'' (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Butterfield, Rosaria
1962 births
Living people
American religious writers
American Presbyterians
Women religious writers
Ohio State University Graduate School alumni
Syracuse University faculty
Geneva College faculty
Converts to Presbyterianism
Converts to Protestantism from atheism or agnosticism
20th-century Presbyterians
21st-century Presbyterians
American women non-fiction writers
American women academics
21st-century American women