“At the age of 36, I was one of the few tenured women at a large research university, a rising administrator, and a community activist. I had become one of the “tenured radicals”. By all standards, I had made it. But that same year, Christ claimed me for himself and the life that I had known and loved came to a humiliating end.”
In 1997, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University. An English professor specializing in Critical Theory and Queer Theory, and a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church alongside her girlfriend, Rosaria did not see herself as a likely candidate for Christianity. Happy in what she considered a moral life, she saw no hole that needed to be filled or any lack that needed to be supplied. However, as her academic interests took a new turn after an interesting encounter with a local pastor who responded to an article that she wrote for the local newspaper, a spiritual need was reawakened in her heart. Ken Smith and his wife, Floy, invited Rosaria into their home to further discuss the questions he had asked her in his letter addressing the underlying presumptions which guided her article. In the friendship that blossomed from that meal and discussion, the Smiths demonstrated true Christian love and hospitality while still affirming their Christian values to Rosaria. For example, they welcomed Rosaria into their home and showed Christ’s love to her without compromising the truth by not affirming her decision to practice homosexuality or to teach students to believe something contrary to the Bible, or to support abortion. By God’s grace and through the friendship she found in the Smiths, Rosaria’s life did a 180. In The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, she tells her story.
“In the pages that follow, I share what happened in my private world through what Christians politely call conversion. This word–conversion– is simply too tame and too refined to capture the train wreck that I experienced in coming face to face with the Living God. I know only one word to describe this time-released encounter: impact. Impact is, I believe, the space between the multiple car crash and the body count. I try, in the pages that follow, to relive the impact of God on my life.”
The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert is a necessary book to read for every Christian. Rosaria’s account of repentance, redemption, and the thoughts that were filling her mind while she wrestled with the truth is important for fellow Christians to know as they seek to advance the kingdom of Christ.
Rosaria tells her story in a readable and simple manner, however she doesn’t mince words. Though she writes about sin in an appropriate manner, this isn’t a book to hand to your middle schooler. The Secret Thoughts of and Unlikely Convert is for the mature reader.
Moral Value: 5/5
Artistic Value: 4/5
Overall Value: 4.5/5
Edifying: Yes
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