My Conversion to Christ & The Value of Leaving My LGBTQ+ Life-style

Editor’s Note: The following article is customized from a transcript of Rosaria Butterfield’s speech at IFC’s Kingdom Come Conference in April of this yr. Rosaria Butterfield is scheduled to return for the Kingdom Come Conference in March 2026. Learn extra and make your plan to hitch us right here.

I used to be transformed to religion in Jesus Christ twenty-six years in the past after I was a tenured affiliate professor of English, Women’s Studies, and Queer Theory. I used to be in a lesbian relationship with a lady who was an adjunct professor of psychology at a close-by college. I had been out and in of serially monogamous lesbian relationships for a decade and had been a homosexual rights activist for 2.

I used to be a nineteenth-century scholar, and my programs in feminist queer concept included the examine of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin. I co-authored the college’s home partnership coverage, which served as a bellwether and frontrunner for homosexual marriage legal guidelines in New York. I spoke at New York homosexual pleasure rallies on the New York State Legislature. I met well-known homosexual rights activists. I hated the Bible and its instructing, and I taught 1000’s of school college students to do the identical. 

I did all of this as a result of I believed with my complete coronary heart that I used to be homosexual and that homosexual was good. And let’s be clear, in the event you suppose I’m offended, I’m as a result of I created the evil on the earth that you simply all need to take care of. 

I do know that my conversion to Christ got here with the loving offense of the gospel, shared over lots of of nourishing meals on the house of Pastor Ken Smith and his pricey spouse, Floyd.

After two years of assembly and feasting with Christians, studying via the Bible, and studying to sing the Psalms, I dedicated my life to Jesus, and I studied the covenant of church membership to arrange to take vows to hitch the church. I broke up with my lesbian accomplice, and I began to develop out my butch haircut and tried to take out all of my piercings. 

[I asked myself,] “How was Jesus going to deal with my persistent lesbian feelings and my patterns of thought, not to mention [the fact] that I was tenured in queer theory? [This] was a terrifying mystery to me. But the gospel, a singular clarion call, a cleft of light in a cavern of darkness, shattered and beckoned me all at once. The truth of Christ’s death and resurrection was a truth over which I had no interpretive authority. It was going to be true whether I believed it or not.

And when I came to Christ, I realized three things:

1. Jesus is real and risen and alive. The triune God of the universe had made a way for me to know him through the Bible and prayer.
2. “Gay” was very a lot how I felt, however the Bible mentioned it was not who I used to be. It was not who I used to be ontologically. He promised his yoke was simple and his burden was mild.
3. The identical God who made the mountains and informed them the place to face was now going to reign over the affections of my coronary heart. This was a God to be feared and worshiped.

Well, my little reformed Presbyterian church ready me for religious battle. In July of 1999, only a few months after I dedicated my life to Jesus, I took the covenant of church membership vows earlier than God, the elders of my church, and the congregation.