This is one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a long time. While some will read it with an eye to the conversion, I ask you read it with an eye to the conduct of the ones God used to bring her to salvation. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield says about herself, “(I was) a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow became one.”
CLICK HERE to read her description of becoming a believer in Christ which she calls a “Train wreck conversion.” Below are a few excerpts.
The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn’t hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that “knowing Jesus” meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it. Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. That’s what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo commercial model.
I began researching the Religious Right and their politics of hatred against queers like me. To do this, I would need to read the one book that had, in my estimation, gotten so many people off track: the Bible. While on the lookout for some Bible scholar to aid me in my research, I launched my first attack on the unholy trinity of Jesus, Republican politics, and patriarchy, in the form of an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers. It was 1997.
The article generated many rejoinders, so many that I kept a Xerox box on each side of my desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail. But one letter I received defied my filing system. It was from the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind and inquiring letter. Ken Smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions I admire: How did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? Ken didn’t argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn’t know how to respond to it, so I threw it away.
Something else happened. Ken and his wife, Floy, and I became friends. They entered my world. They met my friends. We did book exchanges. We talked openly about sexuality and politics. They did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. They did not treat me like a blank slate. When we ate together, Ken prayed in a way I had never heard before. His prayers were intimate. Vulnerable. He repented of his sin in front of me. He thanked God for all things. Ken’s God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. And because Ken and Floy did not invite me to church, I knew it was safe to be friends.
Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. In this war of worldviews, Ken was there. Floy was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit. I rested in private peace, then community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me “wife” and many call me “mother.”
Wonderful testimony of God’s love shown through man and the power of His word to change hearts and minds. Thanks for sharing.
This is simply another example of how our Lord loves and works. Far too often we as “Christians” voluntarily/involuntarily, put restrictions on who God will save, have mercy upon, show compassion to, love, or accept. We MUST take off these self imposed blinders. Years ago I came to understand that if God could save and change me, God could change and save anyone. Our Father loves us all, he demonstrated that love by allowing his only begotten son to be sacrificed to atone for our sin. God does not categorize sin, we do. We act just like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11;”God I thank You that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector”. We admit we are sinners, but not really bad sinners. ALL sin is abhorrent to God. He sent Jesus because “There is none righteous not even one” ( Romans 3:10). So I am not surprised by God’s interaction with this lady, it supports everything I know and believe about him. Jesus himself said, “With people this is impossible but with God all things are possible (Matt: 19:26). The word of God is powerful, as stated in Rom 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes”. We as Christians must understand that how we act toward others, what we say and do had an effect, if we truly love our neighbor as ourselves we would demonstrate the love identified in 1 Cor 13 4-7. Apparently Ken and Floy of the article did with great results.