Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Before you can resolve the issues of our day, you must be able to clarify them.

Terms like same-sex marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gay Christian are part of the discourse of daily life; yet enormous controversy surrounds them. They are the stuff of news headlines and vitriolic social media posts. But they also reflect stirrings of the heart in real people with real questions and concerns.

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, once a leftist professor in a committed lesbian relationship and now a confessional Christian, but always the thoughtful and compassionate professor, has written a followup to The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. This book answers many of the questions that people pose when she speaks at universities and churches, questions not only about her unlikely conversion to Christ but about personal struggles that the questioners only dare to as someone else who has traveled a long and painful journey.

Dr. Butterfield not only goes to great lengths to clarify some of today’s key controversies, she also traces their history and defines the terms that have become second nature today—even going back to God’s original design for marriage and sexuality as found in the Bible. She cuts to the heart of the problems and points the way to the solution, which includes a challenge to the church to be all that God intended it to be, and for each person to find the true freedom that is found in Christ.

Genres: Christian, Theology, Nonfiction, Christian Living, Christianity, Sexuality, Faith

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Rosaria is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University. After her conversion to Christianity in 1999, she developed a ministry to college students. She has taught and ministered at Geneva College and is a full-time mother and pastor's wife, part-time author, and occasional speaker.

Reviews

[Becky Pliego · Rating 5 out of 5]

2023: Very good.

2022: I keep saying it, this is one of my favorite books. And the main reason I love it is because it is Gospel-filled. This is a book for all Christians, including those who might think repentance and Gospel hope are for the “them”, not for “us,” -as if unbelief did not creep into our hearts when sin knocks at the door.

***

What a gift to the church Rosaria Butterfield is. Open her books and find out why.

The author does a great job to help us understand how our identity in Christ is vital to fight sin (any sin, not only sexual sin!) in our lives. It is truly biblical, clear, and practical.

Butterfield's passion for words is helpful too, as she discusses various terms and their uses (and misuses) that need to be (re)defined to join the current conversation with the LGBT community and believers struggling with SSA.

Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere, listening to Mrs. Butterfield narrate her own books is a delight.

2018: This time I read the book ( I missed hearing the author singing Psalms, as she does in the audio book, though). I might dare say that this book is in my top 5 books. I have never struggled with sins of homosexuality and yet I have benefited from this book so much. I can assure you that you will be super grateful to read it too.

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Openness Unhindered, Rosaria Butterfield is preaching what she practices. Rosaria was a friend and mentor of mine in college and I hear her wise, gentle, and loving voice in this book. The hospitality written of here was real life for me and my friends. The frank-but-gentle discussions of sin, repentance, and forgiveness found here in Rosaria's words were found in Rosaria's home--along with scripture, prayer, and honey-covered homemade bread. I was an unchurched believer when I went to college and Rosaria's invitation to come to church and join her for lunch, conversation, and fellowship with a rotating group of fellow college students brought me into somewhat regular church attendance.

I read Rosaria's first book and liked it well-enough. I loved this book. It was meatier and almost more technical. More Modern Puritan-like, maybe. And I personally felt that the sin discussions in this book very clearly extend to any sin. All sin. Reading it, I never felt like this was a book for a specific subgroup of Christians, but for all of us believers who struggle with all kinds of sin.

Speaking of which, I think Rosaria says that subgroups of Christians do not exist: All Christians are only identified by being in Christ--not by any specific temptation pattern or sin pattern. Plus, all Christians are sinners and have to keep guard against sexual sin. I think I expected this book to be mainly helpful for relating to, understanding, and loving other Christians, with maybe some encouragement to all believers to keep fighting the good fight against lust and to flee immorality. Instead, I really think this book is helpful to me in dealing with any sin. All sin.

Even bigger than dealing with specific sins alone, Openness Unhindered reminds us that we all sin, we all have indwelling sin, and we all have sin blind spots. It encourages us all, as John Owen says, to "be killing sin or it will be killing you."

[Havebooks Willread · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual, Rosaria Butterfield's writing is very enjoyable. Her first book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, was one of my favorite books the year I read it (for her writing style and the thoughts she prompted). But I didn't enjoy this one as much. This book was a lot more of her personal experience and understanding of her "union with Christ". I must admit there is much I didn't agree with in it as she is loudly calvinist in her belief system.

Having said that, there were still several things I liked about the book, which made it worth reading in my estimation.

1) I really appreciate her intellectualism, especially as she analyzes the current LGBT movement. I think she is very astute in her dialogue about how christians should interact with people experiencing same-sex attraction, particularly christians who struggle with unwanted attraction. I like the care she takes with words--words have meaning!--as we navigate the culture around us. I also really appreciate her understanding of worldview--both the Freud/Marx/Darwin-influenced worldview and theistic worldview. For example, her examination of the origin of the concept of "sexual orientation" was fascinating, enlightening, and a little sickening as I realize how thoroughly the worldview has infiltrated our culture. I like the way she took an intellectual approach to the Bible reading it through multiple times, analyzing the literary genres, its canonicity, etc. as she dissected its claims and finally couldn't deny its Truth.

2) I was fascinated at her examination of root causes for the sin of homosexuality, particularly her assertion that homosexuality, as all sin, is rooted in pride and our desire to put ourselves on the throne rather than submitting to God.

3) She had some really interesting analysis of the difference between admitting sin and confessing sin, and also great discussions of repentance and the difference between being tempted and sinning.

4) I think my favorite chapter was the one entitled community, as she expounds on what biblical hospitality is and the community we should be building in our homes and with our church family. She has many good thoughts in this area and paints a beautiful picture of a community where everyone has a place and belongs, no one is lonely, people are able to share their struggles and temptations, and God is glorified.

I liked her first book a lot better, but there were some good points to ponder in this one as well.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Observations about Christian community intertwined with theological tangents on sanctification and identity in Christ. Thought provoking and convicting.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book like it that I had read. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like a well-written treatment of sexual identity and its relationship to identity in Christ. The writing is meaty but accessible, and Butterfield's opinions are clearly Scriptural without being hostile or prideful (on the contrary, she states clearly that brotherly love should override our differences of opinion, and it should be love and hospitality that color our interactions with those with whom we disagree). Her chapters on the nature of sin and identity with Christ seemed theologically sound to me (also being Reformed) though I did sometimes wonder if, for the average believer, it might not be better to focus more on simple faith and obedience to the clear Word of God and take a Psalm 131 approach to the intricacies of theology that she expressed. That said, her explanations were detailed and clear, and given the nature of what she is trying to accomplish in this book, and how an understanding of sin and identity are key to her overall thesis, it's worth thinking through what she writes. As someone with a bookish, academic bent, I really appreciated Butterfield's serious, academic, clear style, and the organization of her arguments. Her ideas on hospitality show through her writing, and I often felt like I was reading something written by a friend. She is thorough without being verbose, and she expresses her strong arguments with an attitude of kindness and humility.

[ValeReads Kyriosity · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosaria is a tremendous gift for the kingdom at such a time as this. There are a very few points where I think she doesn't get things quite right, but her thoughtfulness and graciousness are unquestionable.

Read by the author, which is always the best bet for getting the tone right.

[Felipe Sabino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dos melhores livros sobre santificação!

[Austin Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a few books on the topic LGBTQ over the past few years, but I think this is the best one I’ve read so far…at least in terms of helping me grow in my understanding on how to love these people with the gospel. As a follower of Jesus, I need so much to grow in my love for people and the gospel. The challenge is how to love well without compromising the gospel. Read the book!

[Josh Broccolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply challenging read.

The main thrust of the book is hard to pin down as Mrs. Butterfield really emphasizes the "Thoughts of an unlikely convert" in the title by moving from a brief overview of her past (much more fully covered in her first book, "The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into the Christian Faith") into a section on Biblical sexual ethics and then shifts into how her family builds community within the church and her local neighborhood.
The book almost reads like a memoir with Mrs. Butterfield explaining how areas of her past (the LGBT community and humanitarian outreach) have shaped her present life, touching on different issues that are most important to her (community in the church, reaching out to orphans in the foster care system, biblical marriage, etc.), so if there's any critique it's simply that the book isn't particularly focused; though I prefer to think of it as "conversational" and deeply personal.

The two most challenging ideas I'm walking away with, fresh off of finishing the book, are:
1) Sexual Orientation is a modern concept that is not Biblical. If our rule of faith and practice is the Bible, we cannot simply accept the idea that our sexual tendencies define our personhood. The Bible speaks of "homosexual acts", not "homosexual people". In plain terms, one cannot "act gay" or "be gay" though one can commit homosexual acts. This shifts the focus from the person to the action, with ultimate redemption from our fallen nature and actions only being found in Jesus Christ.

2) Community is required for Christian (read: "Biblical") living.
Though I know this in part, it is certainly challenging to read how the Butterfields live this out in their life and it encourages me to do the same. This forces me to re-evaluate where I focus my time and energy and to ask God how I ought to live this out more fully in my life, within my current circumstances.

An excellent read. Though I don't agree with Rosaria 100% on everything she writes in the book, there is much to be learned through her encouragements.

[Darla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book you read carefully and thoughtfully, then keep on your shelf for future reference. A large amount of ground is covered and there is much to ponder once you get to the final page. The contents have given me a new way to look at the issues of our day through the lens of scripture with reminders of how history has shaped our thinking in ways we do not even realize. The following quote from the Preface may help interested readers see the value of this book: "My prayer is that this book will serve as a bridge to Christ for those of us whose sin (sexual and otherwise) has clobbered us more times than we can count, and for our churches and Christian friends who want to help but don't know where to begin or what to say." Simply said, this book is for everyone as we have "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23 ESV)

[Yibbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most cheerful books I’ve read in a while. Rosaria’s faith and her determination to live it out every day are so encouraging. She helps us see how beautiful God’s redeeming grace is and how accessible it is those who are willing to seek Him for it.
This book covers a broad range of topics such as the nature of temptation, the fallen nature of man, repentance, hospitality, love, Biblical guidelines for Biblical disputes, and the importance of prayer and worship. While there is a great deal of teaching in this book it really isn’t a doctrinal treatise. Instead, she tells us about her life and experiences along with the doctrines that undergird her choices. It is a wonderful example of God’s Word being lived out to His glory and for a witness of Him.
I would recommend it to everyone I know.

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first came across Openness Unhindered’s author Rosaria Butterfield on a video where she told her story of coming to Christ out of a lesbian lifestyle. I loved the fact that my favorite book, the Bible, was instrumental in her conversion. Openness Unhindered testifies to how she has continued to engage with it at a deep and thoughtful level.

In the book, the second one she has authored about her faith since she left her old life around 1999, she alludes briefly to her conversion story. Then she goes on to talk about how she has wrestled with her past and come to a place of equilibrium as a home school mother and pastor’s wife. Passages like the following tug at the heart:

“I am and always will be Rahab—a woman with a past. So, what does a person like me do with such a past? I have not forgotten. Body memories know my name. Details intrude into my world unpredictably, like when I am kneading the communion bread or homsechooling my children. I take each ancient token to the cross, for prayer, for more repentance, for thanksgiving that God is always right about matters of sin and repentance” – Kindle Location (KL) 631.

She stresses the importance of her new identity in Christ and of repentance. The title of the chapter on repentance alone testifies to how foundational it is to her: “Repentance: The Threshold to God and the Answer to Shame, Temptation and Sin.”

In chapters titled “Sexual Orientation—Freud’s Nineteenth Century Mistake” and “Self-representation—What Does it Mean to be Gay?” she unpacks the history of the gay rights movement and explains how “gay” has become a term of identity. In fact, she argues, gay doesn’t even belong, as an adjective, together with Christian. She says:

“Gay is a word that carries stigma because of God’s moral prohibitions against homosexuality. ... Because the Bible is clear on the point that homosexual practice is a sin, and because gay is a synonym for the implied desire for or practice of homosexuality, the stigma of this term is an act of God’s love, because God uses it to convict his children of their brokenness” –KL 2111.

Another powerful chapter is the one on Christian community. Here Butterfield describes how their family's hospitality toward neighbors and church members became a closely woven safety net for all involved.

This was a great read! Though I did find the theological chapters a bit of a slog (Butterfield was a university professor in her former life and in plumbing these challenging topics comes across somewhat professorial), for the most part I enjoyed the book and learned a lot. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“When we are owned by God, we are ruined for the world. And this marring of us for the world is one of the birthmarks of conversion” – KL 595.

“Temptation comes in many forms, but it is always personal, uncannily tailor-made for our individual moral weakness, and it takes aim at God’s character, seeking to ransack our faith” – KL 1343.

“Desires for things God has forbidden are a reflection of how sin has distorted me, not how God has made me” – Sam Allbery quoted on KL 2320.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is trying to understand where homosexual practice fits within the Christian life and the church. Openness Unhindered is a part of my own Kindle collection.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gospel truth told transparently with gospel love. I enjoyed listening to Rosaria read her book, but there is much I want to revisit, so I bought the book. It will be on my top 2020 “to-read” stack.

[Maggie Mince · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Stepping into God’s story means abandoning a deeply held desire to make meaning of our own lives on our own terms based on the preciousness of our own feelings. We leave and we cleave. Or we never really understand what it means that Christ died in our place. We can only take this leap if Christ jumps for us. While we can beg him with a contrite heart, we cannot accomplish salvation, repentance, or sanctification at our will.”

The words of this book are bold, convicting, and eloquently laced together to paint a beautiful picture of gospel truth. Using her own sanctification story, Rosaria cuts to the core of the indwelling sin within humans and the presence of Christ amidst that sin as being what sets believers apart. She elaborates on repentance and it’s renouncement of our fleshly desires. She discusses the freedom from being defined by patterns of temptation, and reminds us that in Christ, we have the liberty to respond in repentance to our sinful nature as we behold our nature in Christ.

[Laurabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read. While Rosaria focuses on the sin and struggles of homosexuality, her confession/healing principles of sin apply to many sins and struggles. She writes with clarity and precision without coming off as a softy or too harsh. Highly recommend.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a couple years late reading this book, but I enjoyed reviewing it for Servants of Grace.


"...This popular narrative structure for testimonies inadvertently taught me to put too much emphasis on the moment of conversion and not enough on the life of faith that follows. Rosaria Butterfield’s first book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, tells the story of how she came to faith in Jesus and explains the consequences this conversion had on her career as a professor in the Queer theory department. Butterfield’s follow up book, Openness Unhindered, in some ways tells an even more important story. This is the story of how she has persevered in the faith. This book is targeted at those who struggle with unwanted homosexual desires. Butterfield provides sympathy but stalwart courage to face the lifelong challenges of struggling against sins."

Read more here!

[Anne B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield wrote a memoir. Her book was about her journey from being a lesbian, women's studies professor in upstate New York to being a Christian pastor's wife and mom of four kids. Her book was aptly titled The Secrets of an Unlikely Convert. She was won over to Christ, not by man's words or by the four spiritual laws, but by Christ and the Word of God. Her first book was intended to share her story--to encourage people to love instead of to preach. There was a pastor and his wife who God used to encourage and walk alongside her quietly, listening in love, unwavering in God's Truth. This book was not intended to be one given to someone living a homosexual lifestyle with the hope that it would convince them of the truth.

But, Ms. Butterfield has now written a second book with tackles sexual sin and God's Truth. This new book is one that can be given to one who is struggling. It is one that addresses all sexual sin and the roots of that sin. She writes in the same writing style--you can tell she was a college professor. So, it isn't always an easy read, but rather a worthwhile read packed with nuggets of thought worth chewing on and mulling over. I deeply appreciate Ms. Butterfield's commitment to God's Truth.

Concern has filled my heart as I've watched the changes in our culture at large and even within the Christian community at large. Christians seem to be of two minds when it comes to homosexuality. One camp says that it is not being homosexual and struggling with that temptation that is the sin, but it is acting on that temptation which is sin. We are all tempted by different sins. WE are ALL sinners. This is true. Another camp says that it is okay for a person to be in an actively homosexual relationship because loving another is glorifying to God. This second camp relies heavily on the claim that parts of the Bible have been mistranslated or are only culturally applicable to the time in which it was written, therefore the scriptures (which are many) that say homosexual acts are sin are invalid. Last year, a few years ago a Christian recording artist chose to tour with an lesbian singer and there was some concern deep in my heart. A year and a half later, that recording artist got a divorce due to his infidelity. I don't know if there is a connection, but I do know that when we decide we only want to live by part of God's Word we put up walls in our hearts as if we are saying to God, "This isn't comfortable and it doesn't make people feel good, so I don't want to agree with that part of the Bible anymore." The problem is that the Bible isn't about making us feel good. It is about God. Life is hard and all of us should know that just because something feels "good" doesn't mean that it is "right".

Last Sunday evening, I was teaching my Sunday School class about Moses and the Ten Commandments. I emphasized to them that God told the people not to touch Mount Sinai or they would die. I put a fence up in front of my cardboard model to emphasize this point. One little boy asked with glee, "Well, what if I just throw something at the mountain?" He thought he could get away with it--going around the exact rule. I responded that the person would die, because God was concerned with their hearts. Now, I know that isn't in the Bible, but I do know that Scripture tells us over and over that God is concerned with our Hearts. (Proverbs 21:2, Matthew 6, 1 Samuel 16:7, Ecclesiastes 12:13-14) The little boy was shocked when I told him that he couldn't be sneaky and get away with it. We need to live by God's terms, not ours. He gave us the Moral law in Exodus 20 to help keep us safe--to protect us from harm.

In the same way, Ms. Butterfield writes about our hearts. She wants to challenge us to look at not just our actions, but what is inside our hearts. It isn't the act of throwing a stick that would alarm God, but the heart behind it. God is calling us to live on His terms, not our own.

I deeply respect Ms. Butterfield for writing this second book, Openness Unhindered. But, I respect her more for walking a tough road than for her writing. That is what is toughest. I was shocked to realize how some Christians have treated her over the years. Her stories challenged me to look at my own heart. On page 32, she says, "It is sinful to write people off because they sin in ways that offend you." Wow. She's right.

This book tackles important topics that I think we all need to think about community, loving sisters in Christ that you disagree with about this issue, repentance, sexual orientation, and self-representation. The ideas she introduces can be applied to other areas in our lives. For example, on page 133, she insightfully explains that "Our tendency is to find others who sin just like we do, so that we won't be alone. We search for role models, so that we might minimize the sinfulness of our sin. We enlist others to help us in calling our sin a sanctifying grace. But we ought to quake in fear when we find ourselves traveling that path. Because without intending it, such "covering of sin renders us enemies of God, and not friends." That nugget of truth applies to anger, gossip, lying, cheating... not just to sexual sin.

I grieve to think that there will be Christians who attack this book and the author. Please pray for her and for those who attack it. There are many Christians today who are buying into the belief that we all have a right to be "happy" and because of this, they are absorbing ideas that include thinking that the Bible has been mistranslated and misinterpreted. Yes, it is hard when people we love are declared sinners by the Bible and that they will go to Hell when they die if they don't believe in Jesus. I have people in my own family who have outright denied God and attacked Him and His Word. Should that change that I view the Bible as the infallible, inerrant Word of God? No. I am sad for them, but God's Word is the Truth.

If you are struggling as a Christian to know how to think about homosexuality, how to respond and love people well, how to stay strong in the Truth that you read in God's Word about homosexuality, and get mind around what is changing in our culture, then I highly recommend that you read this book. It will give you an enormous amount of food for thought. I know that it is going to give me much to think about for a long time.

Please note that I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher, Crown and Covenant Publications.

[Lauren S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosaria is a gifted writer and she doesn't sugarcoat the Truth. Great read on God's life changing work in her life and how to live daily as children of God.

[Elise]

Convicting, convincing, Gospel saturated. In my opinion Openness Unhindered is Butterfield’s expanded form of Secret Thoughts (It’s also much less autobiographical).

One of my favorite parts of her writing is how she seamlessly weaves deep theological concepts with her daily life.

Personally, this book has brought some hope for a brighter day.

[Blythe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Rosaria's personality, her voice, her intelligence, her story, and her writing style. But I am not crazy about her understanding of sexual identity. I agree more with Wesley Hill. Of course, their experiences are vastly different, which I assume plays into how they approach the topic. I struggled through the book until I reached the chapters on conflict and community; I LOVE those chapters and gobbled them up!

[Arlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how this book made me think. It was challenging on a personal level and as I thought about my theological perspectives. I feel like I haven't had such a straightforward discussion on sin for years. It's funny how I hadn't really noticed.

[Wyatt Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Butterfield gives a high level theology argument to account for sexual orientation. Well-argued and thoughtful.

[Pat Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really important! Please read!

[Katie Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. Wow. So. So. So good. One I want to own for sure. I really appreciated Rosaria’s humility, openness, passion, and grace. Rosaria’s words are 💯

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I picked up Rosaria’s book in 2012, I thought to myself, “Well… she’s an English professor. At least the prose will be enjoyable.” Now I’m ashamed at how low my expectations were. I had no idea how her book would become the tip of the spear for a rewewed cultural discussion dealing with sexual identity and orientation. Since that time it has been my privilege to get to know Rosaria through emails, prayer request exchanges, and a shared event at a local university. So when I saw that she was due to release her second book at the beginning of July I was delighted and my expectations were so much higher. To say my expectations were met would be an understatement and not because I now consider Rosaria a friend but because the book is excellent in so many ways.

First of all, her book is excellent because it is basic in the best possible way. True to form as a former college professor, Rosaria assumes that her audience will be a diverse crowd. Some will be familiar with the terminology of Christianity, and some will be familiar with the more technical jargon of secular academic discourse. This is obvious to the reader because they run across definitions of such words as “redeem,” “inerrancy” and “original sin” as well as words like “hermeneutics”, “dialogic”, and “Queer Theory.” This makes the book accessible to anyone who wishes to put in the effort. But her book is basic in the best possible way because she doesn’t simply stop with “the basics”. She is able to lead the readers from where they are into the deeper waters of applying the biblical concepts like union with Christ and repentance to the cultural issues of sexual orientation and self-identification. But she doesn’t leave the reader in the often esoteric and ephemeral realm of academic discourse but rather leads one into the real world where we must live together with open, honest, and earnest disagreements and somehow try to forge a community in the midst of conflict and tension.

Secondly, her book is excellent because the chapter on repentance is simply stellar. And while it’s stellar in too many ways to list in this review, the opening volley of this chapter is too masterful to pass up expounding. It is here where Rosaria exorcises the specter of shame from the concept of repentance as it is often perceived in the broader culture. She defines shame well and then describes the near-universal struggle with shame when she speaks autobiographically: “[O]ne problem with shame is that it just wouldn’t stay in my past (p.59).” (Isn’t this really true for us all?) But the thing Rosaria does that really sets the reader free is that she elucidates how the remaining presence of indwelling sin conspires with our unrealistic expectations of leading a “triumphant” Christian life relatively free of sin in order to generate a haunting shame that paralyzes and/or isolates. We often live with this naive idea that conversion to Christianity entails a move from spiritual bondage to spiritual easy street, whereas the reality we face after conversion is more like moving from spiritual bondage to spiritual battle. And this is where repentance becomes “the threshold to God.” Repentance takes seriously God’s holy standards for living (a.k.a. God’s law) and our desire to demonstrate our love for Christ by conforming our lives to those standards. According to Rosaria (and the Bible), “Conversion gives you the freedom to repent...” and repentance is the on-going practice whereby we “must… put to death those sinful desires of the flesh and of the world that entice us (Rom. 8.13)(p. 63).” We turn from who we are to who Jesus is at our conversion, and through repentance we turn from complacency with continuing sin to waging war with that sin because we love the Savior. As she says in a prior chapter, “God gives you victory by equipping you to do battle with sin, and by giving you the humility to know that you need him every step of the way (p.56).”

This is the beautiful freedom that every person needs. This is the “good” part of the good news. This is the true center that meets the ugliness of our real. This shows us just how dark the well of our sinful hearts are and how gloriously bright and hopeful the finished cross-and-empty-tomb work of Christ is. For anyone who has struggled with some form of sexual brokenness (e.g. porn addiction, unwanted homosexual desire, etc.), grace at each step is the much-needed gospel… grace for conversion, grace for seeing our sins rightly, grace for strength to wage battle, grace to endure the war until Christ comes again. Certainly we are not passive participants in this life of our apprenticeship to Christ, but the grace flowing from Christ himself is both the fount and the continued flow necessary.

Rosaria then takes her readers from the chapter on repentance into two immensely clarifying chapters “Sexual Orientation” and “Self-Representation” that demonstrate how she is a most capable expositor of the secular cultural narrative. And though the best chapter is the one on repentance, the way she ends her book is probably the most important. Some readers might think she distracts from the main purpose of the book with her last two chapters, “Conflict” and “Community”. However, it is these very chapters where readers see an example of what Christian love (in older times called “charity”) looks like when it puts its working clothes on. Through republishing some private correspondence between herself and another woman, Rosaria helps us see how two Christians can do more than “agree to disagree” but actually pursue meaningful, ongoing discourse where deep disagreements abide. Then, like a vehicle gently merging into a different lane of traffic, she takes us into “Community” (chapter 7). It is in this chapter where the reader is left with the sense that finding cultural accord on topics like sexual identity and ethics will most likely be found in the arena of dinner tables rather than debate halls. She reminds us all that, “People are always more complex than the ideas they embrace (p.163)” and that hospitality and community are “how our faith is visible and serviceable, powerful and potent (p. 147).”

In her first book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Rosaria says in reference to the pastor who befriended her during her days at Syracuse, “Good teachers make it possible for people to change their positions without shame (p.14).” That is, in fact, what Rosaria herself offers in this volume. The reader who wishes to give her a friendly ear will find a beautiful soul beckoning them to embrace someone who has been embraced and changed by the risen Christ. Readers are invited, not to leave their shame at the door, but to bring it in with them and join her at the table as equals so that their shame can be dealt with. And in this culture, where shame appears to be the primary currency in so many secular and Christian corners, Rosaria’s teaching here is so helpful and so sorely needed.

[Kyleigh Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my favorite of Butterfield's first three books, probably because it ties in the other two--and because it's the most personally challenging of all three.

The subtitle mentions sexual identity, and Butterfield does camp out there, but it's honestly helpful across the board in thinking about identity, sin, temptation, and sanctification, especially in exploring the relationship between temptation and sanctification, with sanctification not being the removal of temptation but growth in what we choose to do in response. That's both encouraging and challenging.

As usual, there's also lots about hospitality and a vision for church and neighborhood community coming alongside others.

It is, however, fairly rambly, hence only three stars.

[Gabie Peacock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosaria Butterfield's storytelling abilities are unmatched. I read "Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert" many years ago and I am kicking myself that I didn't immediately jump into this one after! This is beautifully written with many biblical principles. Rosaria challenges the postmodern view of sexual identity and brings clarity to many controversial topics. I have been influenced and blessed by Rosaria over the years hearing her interviews and reading her books. Highly recommend.

[Hannah Mignard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoy a Rosaria Butterfield book! Her open and honest writing is refreshing and I always feel spurred on to speak the truth and love others through hospitality after reading her work! Highly recommend ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Dana Hinman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholarly and smart. Not the easiest to get through with the details and nuance but someone needed to write this book. Rosaria is brilliant.

[JC]

Still deciding if I’m not rating this book, or I am actually rating it 0 stars.

I read this book because an evangelical friend recommended Rosaria Champagne Butterfield to me and I felt obligated to at least try to read a perspective that is in almost all ways diametrically opposed to mine. In some sense it was a good thing I read this, if only to recognize that evangelical homophobia has fostered far more sophisticated arguments to condemn queer people (particularly queer Christians) than in previous decades and one should not underestimate their ability to start reversing progress made on these issues. I'm not that interested in engaging in the whole ‘culture wars’ discourse and I do think it is more often a source of distraction from the core theological issues of the Christian faith (as I see it) as well as from the primary political issues of 21st century life (but I risk being a reductionist here so I should be careful) but this is actually quite serious.

So Butterfield was a so-called ‘leftist’ professor teaching feminist and queer literary theory, and was in a monogamous lesbian relationship while she was researching the conservative Christian right. Her story is that for the most part she encountered really hateful Christians who said fairly terrible things to her, which is precisely what she went out looking for as a feminist academic trying to understand the Christian right. But she encountered one man, a Presbyterian pastor I think, who was different. He was patient, answered her questions, and didn’t treat her like a project, did not even try to convert her but he and his wife showed her hospitality and answered her questions with great generosity. Eventually Butterfield read through the bible multiple times (as an academic) asking this pastor many questions, and eventually had a conversion experience, leaving behind her job in academia, her lesbian relationship, and getting married to a (different) male pastor and becoming a stay-at-home mom who homeschooled her children.

That biographical trajectory has caused a lot of students at evangelical colleges to protest Butterfield when she comes to speak on their campus; I think out of a concern that her testimony in some sense implies queer people need to become straight if they are to become Christians. Maybe because of this agitation, maybe before it (I do not know), Butterfield stated many times in very clear terms that she is against conversion therapy. This is why I think Butterfield as a phenomenon represents a move towards more sophisticated lines of reasoning that evangelicals are gravitating towards in asserting queerphobic positions. Christians of the left like Cheri DiNovo are still campaigning on issues like conversion therapy (which I think is very important, and I am happy Bill C-6 is making progress, though it does not have a wide enough definition of conversion therapy) but the argument has moved quite far past that. Butterfield says that as a queer feminist she always saw sexuality as very fluid so coming out of a lesbian relationship into a so-called opposite-sex pairing was not a matter of becoming ‘straight’. She disagrees with using terms like ‘sexual orientation’, which I will get into later. Butterfield says the ‘solution’ for people with ‘same-sex attraction’ (because it is a ‘problem’ to Christians like her), the solution is ‘Jesus’ – the solution is not becoming ‘straight’.

My sense is that her lesbianism was coming from a separatist feminist current, which I associate with second-wave feminism (as an ignorant person who has poor knowledge of feminist history). But Butterfield recognizes that it is not always like that for everyone. She knows people will have those so-called ‘same-sex’ attractions for the rest of their lives as Christians and sometimes are called to celibacy. She says she still wrestles with it daily, but also happens to have found a sexual relationship with a man, but recognizes some Christians will have to live the rest of their lives alone.

Obviously I am radically opposed to this. I think people can be queer and Christian at the same time. If it is a contradiction at all (I don’t see that it is), one must also recognize that every Christian life exists in a whole constellation of contradictions. The Christian canon itself is contradictory. Our whole tradition is a community extending over millennia and has an abundance of contradictions. It’s disingenuous to claim otherwise.

So now to get into Butterfield’s quibble over terms like ‘sexual orientation’, which I think raises very interesting points of interventions for queer-affirming Christians with respect to the new terrain this contestation has moved into. So Butterfield is against using terms like ‘gay Christian’. Her battle is not actually so much with Christians who are affirming of their own queer sexuality or identity. She takes the ‘immorality’ of ‘same-sex sexuality’ as a given. She’s actually debating other Christians who ‘struggle’ with ‘same-sex attraction’ who have committed to celibacy or abstinence from ‘same sex activity’ as Christians – these people who still refer to themselves as ‘gay Christians’ and that is who Butterfield is arguing with.

How does Butterfield approach this subject? Well by way of Foucault of course. She writes:

“Everyone loses when we define ourselves using categories that God does not. People who identify as heterosexual and homosexual have much to lose. In 2014, Michael Hannon wrote an absorbing essay in the journal First Things entitled “Against Heterosexuality: The Idea of Sexual Orientation is Artificial and Inhibits Christian Witness.” He begins his essay with Michel Foucault, the famous French historian of ideas who died of AIDS in 1980 [my comment: out of all the things to say about Foucault, wtf?]. Hannon writes:

‘Michel Foucault…details the pedigree of sexual orientation in his History of Sexuality. Whereas “sodomy” had long identified a class of actions, suddenly for the first time, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the term “homosexual” appeared alongside it. This European neologism was used in a way that would have struck previous generations as a plain category mistake, designating not actions, but people—and so also with its counterpart and foil “heterosexual”…with secular society rendering classical religious beliefs publicly illegitimate, pseudoscience stepped in and replaced religion as the moral foundation for venereal norms.’

Sexuality moved from verb (practice) to noun (people), and with this grammatical move, a new concept of humanity was born—the idea that we are oriented or framed by our sexual desires; that our differing sexual desires and different objects of desire made up separate species of people, and that self-representation and identity rooted now in sexual orientation, and not in the purposes of God for his image bearers. In Foucault’s words, “Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality…when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy into a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was a new species” (emphasis mine). Prior to the nineteenth century category-invention of sexual orientation, no one’s sexual practice or sexual desire prescribed personhood or defined their personal identity.”

This is actually a very interesting move on Butterfield’s part because most evangelicals would not accept this premise. The standard liberal move is to say what Paul condemns in Romans and what the other writers of the pseudo-Pauline epistles write about is not homosexuality, because the category of ‘homosexuality’ was a 19th-century construction. And therefore one cannot simply transpose condemnation of same-sex activity from so many centuries ago onto modern ‘homosexual’ relationships in the 21st century. It is anachronistic to do so. Fascinatingly Butterfield is in effect accepting this premise to make her point that ‘sexual orientation’ (and its various types ‘homosexual’/’heterosexual’) are modern constructions and Christians should not accept them because they are somehow ‘false’ and they take away from the only true identity of the Christian which she claims is found in Christ alone. Butterfield’s point I suppose is that the sin is less ontological, it is not wrong to ‘be’ someone who has ‘same-sex attractions’ but it is wrong to act on those attractions. In other words being homosexual is not wrong (though she would argue Christians should not identify as ‘homosexual’) but what is wrong for her is gay sex lol. At least that is my reading of her view, but it does not adequately address the contextual gap between such long periods of time. What was Paul condemning? Context also does affect what those acts mean. The same act of ‘penetration’ in the context of consent and non-consent are two completely different things, and context matters.

Although, I am of the view that it doesn’t actually matter all that much theologically whether Paul would condemn homosexuality in the 21st century context. I don’t read the bible as an inerrant document, and I feel perfectly comfortable with saying Paul was wrong on a number of points.

I may have read Butterfield's comments on intersectionality and identity politics elsewhere, but she has a very cynical and uncharitable view of that sort of politics. I was reading interviews of members of the Combahee River Collective, a Black socialist feminist organization, which likely coined the term 'identity politics', and they comment on how the meaning of the term has changed quite a bit over the decades, such that it becomes a target of caricature among the Right. And I think Butterfield performs such a caricature of it as a turncoat reactionary.

Butterfield has a whole section on Romanticism, Rousseau, and Goethe. I believe Butterfield’s doctoral dissertation was on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and so she mentions that Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther was among the books of Frankenstein’s monster’s collection of books, but that the creature perfectly exhibited all the failings of Rousseau’s belief in the original innocence of human beings, in childhood (in many ways that is also a part of the impulse found in the Christian gospels when Jesus says one must become like a child to enter the Kindom of God). Butterfield quotes the quasi-Marxist poet Randall Jarrell: “Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps.”

Goethe’s Werther novel was very big for me. I spent a whole week in Wetzlar and on my last evening there did a google-translated pdf walking tour of Wetzlar that stopped at all the famous sites Goethe mentions in his novel. It felt exhilarating to follow in Goethe’s steps and feel that young revolutionary fervour he possessed as a young Romanticist. The novel, apart from being among those that Napoleon was said to have kept with him during his military campaigns, it was also the novel that provoked a wave of copycat suicides. Somehow, Butterfield makes such a logical leap, implying one arrives at such nihilistic activity from this very epistemological failing of Romanticism, a world view where Butterfield claims “you know truth through the lens of your own personal experience and no overriding or objective opposition can challenge the primal wisdom of someone’s subjective frame of intelligibility.” I actually first encountered this mode of epistemology through the existentialism of Kierkegaard, but only later found out it was birthed from the Romanticist protest against the monstrous rationality that took the form of industrialization and the horrible atrocities and alienation that it arrived with, such as child labour and the miserable working conditions that it coerced the dispossessed masses into.

It’s interesting how Butterfield says that “Romanticism went beyond a solipsistic me-centered understanding of selfhood. Solipsism is the belief that only one’s own mind and its properties are sure to exist. Romanticism took this one step further to declare personal feelings and experiences the most reliable measure and means of discerning truth.”

Yet she makes no mention of the fact that Evangelicalism shared the common root of Pietism with Romanticism, and was vulnerable to that same precise self-absorption and individualism. Where the Gospel of Jesus was reduced to a vulgar notion of individual salvation and preservation and not about bringing Good News to the poor and establishing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. The Puritans which Butterfield is so enamoured with formed an important basis for the individualist self-absorption of capitalist values that so plague our society today.

Yet Butterfield’s interest in the Puritans has stoked an interest in them myself. Butterfield mentions Puritans a lot in this book, including teaching Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in Sunday school. This was one other redeeming aspect of reading this book. I have two Christopher Hill books on my shelf at home: “Puritanism and Revolution” and “A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church” which I have been skimming through over the past two weeks. Hill (a British Marxist historian) points out fascinating radical positions Bunyan had with respect to the gentry and landowners, and how he continually condemned the rich and said they were going to hell. For all the disturbing things about the Puritans I think there’s a lot one might hold onto to use against those evangelicals who claim the Puritans as their own. One can see quite an overlap between the Puritans and communists, for better and/or for worse. This includes homophobia which has littered leftist history also.

I suppose the only other redeeming quality of this book was Butterfield’s assertions about the Christian duty to offer radical hospitality to others. A practice she said she honed during her time in queer communities saying: “The LGBT community values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice, and integrity.”

Butterfield grew up in a liberal Catholic environment reading much of the bible metaphorically and was part of a Unitarian Universalist congregation before turning to a conservative Presbyterian congregation. I speculate it was the Puritans that drew her in. She was more a liberal than a leftist as I see it. I read some of her academic work on incest and sexual abuse in the family, and her form of feminism seemed very intimately connected with a type of second-wave separatist feminism that I don’t relate with very much, and despite her critiques of postmodernism (some of which I agree with) Butterfield still relies on postmodern theory in the formulation of her queerphobic interpretations of Christian scripture and tradition. I am, to be quite frank, puzzled at her conversion story, and I don’t think she spent enough time explaining why she feels compelled to read the bible as an inerrant document now. Either way, I try to keep my friends’ books close, and my enemies’ books closer, and I think I did so while reading this book. A terrible book to read during Pride month, but also important for understanding where the religious right is at right now.