Resetting the Rigging For Stormy Waters

Radical, Encouraging Stuff

One of our readers has commented on the writings and ministry of Rosaria Butterfield, which he has enjoyed and from which he has benefited.

It may be that readers are unfamiliar with the life and ministry of Rosaria and her husband, Kent and their children.

The video link below is just short of an hour.  It provides a window into ways Christian families can minister to neighbours under difficult circumstances.  This is timely.  As our culture moves more and more into the perils of Gnostic deconstruction, maintaining a Christian culture becomes a matter of urgent necessity.

We encourage our readers to set aside some time and view the video.

https://vimeo.com/283503681

"Joining the Dots"

Conversation With an Unlikely Convert

Lita Cosner chats with Dr Rosaria Butterfield

Creation.com INFObytes

Dr Rosaria Butterfield

Rosaria Butterfield is the author of Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered. She is a public speaker, pastor’s wife and mother. She earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from Ohio State University, is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University, and served in the English Department and Women’s Studies Program there.

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In the title of her first book, Rosaria Butterfield describes herself as an ‘unlikely convert’. Her testimony is widely available both in Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and on many YouTube videos.1 While her conversion included rejecting the lesbian lifestyle she previously saw as a “cleaner and more moral path”, Rosaria is adamant that she was converted not out of homosexuality, but out of unbelief.

A key part of her journey was her friendship with Pastor Ken Smith and his wife Floy. Rosaria says they proved to her they were interested in real friendship. They did not immediately invite her to church or share the Gospel. While that’s a Christian’s first instinct in many situations, she thinks it can make the non-Christian feel like they are nothing more than a new evangelism project to us. While we should certainly share the Gospel, she advises that Christians who want to reach unbelievers can start by just listening. “Ken and Floy spent a lot of time just listening to me—and it wasn’t spare time, it was costly time.”

As an English professor, I specialized in how a book fits together as a whole. So I would say the Lord used all of that training when I came to Scripture.

Reading the Bible

I asked Rosaria how her training as an English professor affected her reading of Scripture. “I was not raised in an evangelical church, so I didn’t know about this particular pattern of reading that the evangelical church often seems to encourage, the ‘verse a day’ type of reading. And I’m glad I didn’t know about it, because it would not have made any sense to me; it would have just driven me mad! As an English professor, I specialized in how a book fits together as a whole. So I would say the Lord used all of that training when I came to Scripture.”

Yet Scripture was also challenging her assumptions. “I was writing a book from a lesbian feminist perspective trying to tear down the Bible. I was opposed to all gender/race oppression, and the Bible, I had heard, was filled with both. I had been raised Catholic, and Protestants have a different canon, and I needed to know why. I had heard about authorship problems in John, and authorship is a key question for English professors. Now, I don’t really think everyone has to confront that; I love the thought of a simple faith that receives the Word of God as a balm to your soul, and not feeling the burden of needing to work through these issues.

“But it was really interesting to discover that the Bible was actually answering my questions. Many times in studying a subject, you have to go outside the text to get answers. But that wasn’t the case with the Bible. So the Lord used every bit of my training, and I would even go so far as to say that the reason I have the training I have was for this moment.”

Biblical marriage is a creation ordinance

Evangelical Christians only want to talk about the New Testament, and you cannot argue for sanctity of marriage from the New Testament alone. You must understand biblical marriage as acreation ordinance.

Rosaria emphasizes the need to approach this issue from the standpoint of a biblical view of creation. “Evangelical Christians only want to talk about the New Testament, and you cannot argue for sanctity of marriage from the New Testament alone. You must understand biblical marriage as a creation ordinance.

“But when you talk about creation, then you step on people’s toes! ‘Oh no! That’s going to offend people. We have scientists in our church!’ But do you not think that any of us who came to Christ out of a life of sin that we loved and enjoyed weren’t offended by the Gospel? The ‘offence’ of the Gospel is one of its signature forms of love.”

Rosaria emphasizes how the idea of male/female marriage is founded in the Genesis account. “You can’t defend the binarism of male and female and the integrity of the male/female binarism in marriage—which is at the centre of the Gospel, not its margins—without understanding it as a creation ordinance, which you can’t do in the New Testament. So if you’re just a ‘New Testament Christian’, you’re part of the problem.”

The ‘yuck’ factor

Rosaria has spoken out against the ‘yuck’ factor used by many evangelicals. “When the LGBT community started to campaign for gay marriage, they attempted to white-wash what counts as gay and lesbian sexuality. ‘We’re just like you, we just want companionship, we want to be able to visit each other in the hospital.’

“However, there were many Christians who said, ‘I smell a rat, because for whatever reason, I know what you’re not telling me, and I want other Christians to understand that this is serious sexual sin that can be damaging and dangerous.’ And so they wrote articles that encouraged Christians to respond with what they would call ‘the yuck factor’. ‘This is disgusting; you have the right to be grossed out about it. If it smells like there’s rotten fish here, there really is.’ And they weren’t wrong. The Bible does say that we are to have a kind of internal ‘resistance to sin’ (1 John 2:3).

“But when Christian pastors portray same-sex attraction as yucky and disgusting and horrible, this encourages gay jokes and it encourages people to speak carelessly. And people in the room who have never told anyone what they’re struggling with will have just perceived that they had better find the exit, because this is a completely unsafe place.

“And then to make matters even worse, you may think the same-sex acts you’re describing are ‘yucky’, but some people don’t. And so faithful Christians may not be tempted until they listen to your sermon or read your blog post. So as Christians talk about sin, and especially sexual sin, we need to do so with decency and modesty (Philippians 4:8). We need to give people the room to confess their sins to their pastors and elders and not unwittingly cause our brothers and sisters to stumble.”

Engaging in hospitality

Hospitality is where you open the doors wide open, because you recognize you have neighbors who are dying of chronic loneliness, and such people will gravitate to anything that fills that void.

Hospitality is a passion for Rosaria, and it is also the topic of her upcoming book. “Hospitality is not some quaint art where your teacups match. Hospitality is where you open the doors wide open, because you recognize you have neighbours who are dying of chronic loneliness, and such people will gravitate to anything that fills that void. Our homes can be sanctuaries for people.” In fact, she says, “The LGBT community values hospitality, and the skills I learned there I now use as a pastor’s wife.”

Standing on a biblical foundation in a hostile culture

Many Christians feel intimidated by the opposition they face in our culture when they take a biblical stand on gender issues. Rosaria said, “In some ways Obergefell2 was decided in the worst possible way for Christians, because sexual orientation became a protected category of personhood under the Supreme Court decision. So as Christians, on what grounds can we deny that someone’s sexual orientation gives them particular civil protections? The biblical ground is that there is no such category of personhood as sexual orientation because we believe Genesis 1:27 is true.

“And here the evangelical church is its own worst enemy, because I think many people in the church are embarrassed about Genesis 1–11. They’re embarrassed about literal 6-day creation; they just think intelligent people shouldn’t go there. Nevertheless, Christians are going to have to be articulate in explaining and living out what it means to be an image bearer of a holy God, one that rejects sexual orientation as a category of personhood for something better.”

Two books authored by Dr Rosaria Butterfield; The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered.

How to engage your homosexual neighbour: first steps

Many want to engage people in this area, and share the Gospel with friends and family who identify as homosexual, but they don’t know where to start. Rosaria suggests approaching this subject in a gentle and caring manner. “We can all engage in Gospel issues from the posture of good neighbours. A good neighbour can’t support gay marriage, because that actually puts a stumbling block between a fellow image-bearer and the God who made him or her. Part of being a good neighbour is also listening well. Many times people will ask me, ‘How do I talk to my neighbours who identify as LGBT?’ But a better question might be, ‘How can I listen so I know where they’re coming from?’

“When we stop seeing homosexuality as a ‘special sin’ and start viewing the issue through the lens of the Gospel, we can start to engage in a more helpful way with our neighbours who struggle with this issue. And when we see this as a creation issue, we have a firm foundation for defending the biblical view of gender and marriage.”

Jesus and His People Showed Up

I Thought Planned Parenthood Protected Family Values

Rosaria Butterfield
July 21, 2015

I was 11 years old when Roe v. Wade (1973) gave women a constitutional right to abortion. My parents told me a story to help me understand this momentous event.

Here was the content: a member of my family, whom I loved, once used her own knitting needles to abort a baby she knew she couldn’t afford to feed.

Here was the meaning: we were practical, hard-working Italians, and nothing was going to hinder us from achieving the American Dream for each and every family member.

This was a story of heroism. The woman was a matriarch who knew how to take control of her own womb, a loving mother who knew poverty and starvation were far worse than death before birth. This was also a story of a nation. Our country was advancing in its high regard for women, leaving the barbaric days of back-alley abortions and welcoming one where medical care came to the aid of heroic women like my beloved relative.

Grip of Old Family Values 

This was one of the first times I remember history folding into future and holding me solidly in the grip of family values: we were a progressive family, and even our unschooled ancestors showed the grit and goodness of the progressive ideas we knew were best.

My family member was not a feminist. Although long dead, she would not want to be remembered this way. She was a poor woman abused by her husband and trapped by a life with too many children to feed. I was taught that the right to choose came to the aid of all women, but especially poor ones.

For most of my childhood and early adulthood, the name “Planned Parenthood” conjured feelings of safety and security.

Vapour Trails

 The Signs of Christ At Work Amongst Us

Some of our readers will be familiar with Rosaria Butterfield.  In this video she responds to questions put to her by Russell Moore, one of the prominent theologians and teachers in the Southern Baptist Confederation.

To those who have not yet come across Rosaria, her experience of coming out of militant lesbianism to faith in the risen Christ is salutary and of great moment for the modern Church.  There is much to learn.  One of the most salutary and encouraging things is how Butterfield responds to questions about her experiences by placing her life within the context of the fundamentals and depths of the Christian faith.  This is what being saved by Christ "looks" like.  There is also important stuff in this video about what the community of the redeemed must be and become. 

Homosexuality is a Sin--Along With Other Things

You Are What—and How—You Read

Rosaria Butterfield
12:05 AM CT
Gospel Coalition

I just returned from a well-known (and well-heeled) Christian college, where roughly 100 demonstrators gathered on the chapel steps to protest my address on the grounds that my testimony was dangerous. Later that day, I sat down with these beloved students, to listen, to learn, and to grieve. Homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia; the snarled composition of our own sin and the sin of others weighs heavily on us all. I came away from that meeting realizing—again—how decisively our reading practices shape our worldview.

This may seem a quirky observation, but I know too well the world these students inhabit. I recall its contours and crevices, risks and perils, reading lists and hermeneutical allegiances. You see, I'm culpable. The blood is on my hands. The world of LGBTQ activism on college campuses is the world that I helped create. I was unfaltering in fidelity: the umbrella of equality stretching to embrace my lesbian identity, and the world that emerged from it held salvific potential. I bet my life on it, and I lost.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Blowing Bubbles From the Bottom

Posted on Friday, February 7, 2014 

B by Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

 

If you think you are up to it, and if you have a cast iron stomach, and if you have not ingested your recommended weekly allowance of piffle over the last few days, you may go here and fix everything.
The short form is that Rosaria Champagne Butterfield — whose book was fantastic, by the way — was invited to speak at Wheaton College. This, all by itself, was sufficient to set off a small protest festival of marginalization and hurt.

I would draw your attention to the last several paragraphs, where the crucial task of telling the gospel story is transformed into a bizarre form of narratival masturbation. The central human predicament, what Luther called incurvatus in se, is transformed into a narcissistic virtue, resulting in a self-righteous circle jerk, only without the sex.

As for the response of Wheaton as an institution, I believe that someone should tell the authorities there that blowing bubbles from the bottom of the pool is not the same thing as breathing.

And . . .

Of Train Wrecks and Car Crashes, Part II

 Faith and Haste Are Usually Like Oil and Water

Conversion for the Apostle Paul appears to have been like a fatal car crash.  The old was smashed.  But out of the wreckage, something new, something wonderful was born.  The Scriptures do not give many details, but it seems that some time after Paul's dramatic Damascus road experience, when the shards of his former identity lay scattered on the ground, he retired to obscurity and privacy.  It would appear that he needed time to be reconstructed, rebuilt by the Spirit to equip him for the ministry ahead.

Paul tells us that after his initial conversion, he went away into Arabia (a desolate and relatively uninhabited place); then he returned to Damascus and then after three years he "came out", going up to Jerusalem to visit with the apostles.  Then, subsequently, he went to Syria and Cilicia  (Galatians 1: 11-24)  All up, it appears that there was a period of about fifteen years between his initial conversion and before his public call to the work of apostleship. 

The breaking of an old identity--particularly one very strongly etched and inscribed--takes time.

Great Books

Book of the Month/March 2013 

Engaging the Culture - Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 02 March 2013

Gosh, what a book.

I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. This will be a relatively short review -- what I want to do is give a brief summary of the set-up, mention three things about it that were simply wonderful, and then conclude with a plea for you to get it and read it.

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was an English professor at Syracuse, a postmodern specialist in Queer Theory, and a radical lesbian. In this book she describes her "train wreck" conversion to Christ, and how the Lord has since then led her step by excruciating step to her current high calling as a Reformed pastor's wife, a homeschooling mom, and a foster parent.

Here are the three things I found striking about this book, in no particular order. The first thing is the obvious potency of hospitality and love.