Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Part 2) - Rosaria Butterfield

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Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Part 1) - Rosaria Butterfield
Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Part 2) - Rosaria Butterfield
Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Part 3) - Rosaria Butterfield

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What Is Hospitality?

Guest: Rosaria Butterfield

From the series: Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Rosaria Butterfield was a committed feminist and a lesbian when a local pastor and his wife invited her over for dinner. What she found in that dinner, and as she started attending his church, was that her caricature of Christians and Christianity was off the mark.

Rosaria: I did not meet Christians who shared a narrowly-bounded, priggish world view. That is not what I met. I met people who could talk openly about sexuality and politics and did not drop down dead in the process. Ken Smith made it so clear to me that he could accept me right where I was—that there is a difference between acceptance and approval.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, September 17th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. We’ll hear today how a Presbyterian pastor was used by God to share the Gospel with a lesbian college professor and about the remarkable transformation that God did in her life. Stay tuned.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. You know, if we were going to sit down in our communities and think where might there be a fertile mission field—people who would be open to hearing the message of the Gospel—I don’t think we would think, “Well, I bet the queer studies program, down at the university—I bet they are dying for somebody to come in and share about Jesus with them.” You know?

Dennis: I wouldn’t think so.

Bob: But the story we’re hearing this week is the story of an unlikely convert. At least, that’s what it says on the front of this book.

Dennis: That’s right. Rosaria Butterfield joins us, again, on FamilyLife Today. Rosaria—welcome back.

Rosaria: Thank you so much. I am delighted to be here.

Dennis: I want you to unpack what Bob just said because some of our listeners are going: “Wait a second! Did Bob just use the word, ‘queer’?”

Rosaria: He did. He did.

Dennis: And before we came into the studio—

Rosaria: Right. We talked about it.

Dennis: —I asked you about this. I think a lot of our listeners would—

Rosaria: Sure.

Dennis: —like to know what the background is. Let me just introduce you, though, before you answer my question. Rosaria has been married to her husband, Kent, since 2001. They have four children. She is a former English professor at Syracuse University. She has written a book called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.

Bob: And did I say something wrong when I said, “queer”?

Rosaria: You did not! No, you did not. Gay and lesbian studies started as a way of understanding the lives and appreciating the contributions made by gay men and lesbian women—but in a context of post-modernism and post-structuralism, even the—what we call normative gender of that statement—men, women—even the normative gender of that statement has become what we call contested or something that is only fixed in the eyes of a culture, not in the hearts of people. So, Queer Theory is the academic manifestation of the post-modern and post-structural world views as it applies to a person’s sexuality.

Bob: So, in 1997, studying—advancing Queer Theory—as a tenured professor at Syracuse—

Rosaria: Well, I was tenured in ’98—

Bob: Okay.

Rosaria: —but you know.

Bob: And you’re in a lesbian relationship, at the time.

Rosaria: Absolutely.

Bob: You write an editorial in the Syracuse newspaper, talking about these patriarchs who are coming to Syracuse—the Promise Keepers group: “No way should we let them near the campus.”

Rosaria: Right.

Bob: You get hate mail, and you get fan mail, and you get one letter from a pastor who says, “Let’s talk.”

Rosaria: Right.

Bob: And that conversation—the beginning of that conversation put you on an unexpected path.

Rosaria: Yes, it did; absolutely; absolutely.

My husband’s name is Kent. Kent is the pastor of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham. He just finished a series on hospitality—a preaching series. It was really interesting for me to sit—many, many years later—and remember that hospitality does not mean fellowship. Hospitality means bringing the stranger in. More than that, it means going to the gate, and getting the stranger, and bringing him or her in. I think, sometimes, Christians think we’re practicing hospitality when we have our homeschool friends from church over for lunch. Well, that’s fellowship, and that’s very good; but it’s not hospitality.

Dennis: You mentioned that the gay and lesbian community was good at this.

Rosaria: Very good at this. So, every Thursday night, my partner and I would open our home to anybody in the gay and lesbian community who wanted to just come in, and talk to us, and tell us what is going on. I tell pastors—you know: “Hints from Eloise.”

Bob: “It’s a good strategy here.”

Rosaria: “It’s a good strategy—just open it up—don’t call it a Bible study. Call it a—just whatever—and just find out who your people are.”

Dennis: Give us some idea of who would come over to your house when you and your partner invited.

Rosaria: Well, I lived—first of all, we are not—I think people don’t understand, sometimes—that, at a university, and especially, where I was coming from...