The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert
An English professor’s journey from queer theory to Christian faith.
In 1997 Rosaria M. Champagne was a lesbian feminist English professor at Syracuse University in New York, specialising in gay and lesbian studies, living with her girlfriend and sporting a butch haircut. Today, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield is a home-schooling mother of four adopted children in Purcellville, West Virginia, married to a pastor of the reformed Presbyterian Church. What happened to bring about this transformation?
Let’s say straight off that it had nothing to do with conversion therapy, or therapy of any sort, useful as those methods may be to some people. Obviously there was a conversion, but one that happened in quite a natural way. Butterfield has written an account of the path she travelled from queer theory to Christ in , a frank, confessional story offering many insights into lesbianism and the interface between homosexual activists and the Christian community.
The journey began with a friendship — and what could be more natural than that? It happened like this. In October 1997 Syracuse associate professor Champagne was doing research for a book on the “religious right” when the university allowed the Christian men’s movement, Promise Keepers, to rent its premises for a weekend event. She protested that the university should have nothing to do with a group believing in male leadership of the family and the “oppression” of women generally. She wrote an op-ed for the local newspaper along those lines, provoking a flood of letters. All of them she could file under “pro” or “anti”, except one.
The letter from Presbyterian minister Ken Smith (who, as it turned out, lived in the same neighbourhood) challenged her gently but seriously, asking her questions no-one had asked before. What were her assumptions about the truth of Christianity? Did she believe in God? What did she think God thought about it all? She rang him up. He and his wife invited her to their home for dinner and a chat. Over the next two years friendly interaction with this older couple and discussions with them, together with her own voracious reading of the Bible (in sittings of up to five hours a day), self-questioning and tentative approaches to the church led to a momentous decision. One Sunday “I emerged from the bed of my lesbian lover and an hour later was sitting in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church.”
Rosaria Butterfield is not the only lesbian to re-orient herself. Melinda Selmys has written about the phenomenon and her own experience on MercatorNet. Another and more dramatic example is provided by Linda Jernigan, a black woman who did an about-face after being “involved in homosexuality for nearly 20 years” — mostly as “a man” — and found “peace in Jesus”. Watching her live testimony (below) is a cultural experience not to be missed, as well as an eye-opener on the contemporary gender scene.
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