Coming Home

How an Unbelieving Lesbian English Professor Became a Reformed Pastor’s Wife

What a fascinating and instructive and encouraging interview, as Marvin Olasky talks with Rosaria Butterfield about her memoir, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith.

Justin Taylor
Jan 18 2013



A breathtaking moving account of coming out of darkness into light, and the steps, means of grace, and the people God used to bring this wonderful saint home.  This is a lengthy discussion--although we could not stop listening having begun.  Pause and break it up into smaller chunks, if it suits you better.  (One reason we posted this on a Saturday night, is that it makes for good Sabbath Day reflection--when many will have the time to do so.)  To God alone be the glory, in Christ Jesus our Lord.  There is much to learn here.   

It makes the current promulgation of homosexual "marriage" appear what it truly is: a fatuous, superficial irrelevance, thus warning Christians not to get sucked into the propaganda that if we love and respect the humanness of homosexuals, we will be accepting of their homosexuality.  It reminds us that God saves sinners, one at a time--and oftentimes, over a long a period of time.  There are awesome references to the significance of Romans 1: 20ff.

This is the blurb taken from her book:

Rosaria, by the standards of many, was living a very good life. She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they provided hospitality to students and activists that were looking to make a difference in the world. There, her partner rehabilitated abandoned and abused dogs. In the community, Rosaria was involved in volunteer work. At the university, she was a respected advisor of students and her department's curriculum. And then, in her late 30s, Rosaria encountered something that turned her world upside down-the idea that Christianity, a religion that she had regarded as problematic and sometimes downright damaging, might be right about who God was, an idea that flew in the face of the people and causes that she most loved. What follows is a story of what she describes as a "train wreck" at the hand of the supernatural. These are her secret thoughts about those events, written as only a reflective English professor could. Conversion put me in a complicated and comprehensive chaos. 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. Often, people asked me to describe the "lessons" that I learned from this experience. I can't. It was too traumatic. Sometimes in crisis, we don't really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed. -Rosaria Butterfield