My
Train Wreck Conversion
As
a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow
became one.
Rosaria
Champagne Butterfield [
posted 12/07/2012 ]
The
word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no
matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who
professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university
professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that
"knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in
particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to
insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a
punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.
Stupid.
Pointless. Menacing. That's what I thought of Christians and their
god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo
commercial model.
As
a professor of English and women's studies, on the track to
becoming a tenured radical, I cared about morality, justice, and
compassion. Fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and
Darwin, I strove to stand with the disempowered. I valued
morality. And I probably could have stomached Jesus and his band
of warriors if it weren't for how other cultural forces buttressed
the Christian Right. Pat Robertson's quip from the 1992 Republican
National Convention pushed me over the edge: "Feminism,"
he sneered, "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill
their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and
become lesbians." Indeed. The surround sound of Christian
dogma co-mingling with Republican politics demanded my attention.
After
my tenure book was published, I used my post to advance the
understandable allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. My life
was happy, meaningful, and full. My partner and I shared many
vital interests: aids activism, children's health and literacy,
Golden Retriever rescue, our Unitarian Universalist church, to
name a few. Even if you believed the ghost stories promulgated by
Robertson and his ilk, it was hard to argue that my partner and I
were anything but good citizens and caregivers. The GLBT community
values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice, and
integrity.
I
began researching the Religious Right and their politics of hatred
against queers like me. To do this, I would need to read the one
book that had, in my estimation, gotten so many people off track:
the Bible. While on the lookout for some Bible scholar to aid me
in my research, I launched my first attack on the unholy trinity
of Jesus, Republican politics, and patriarchy, in the form of an
article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers. It was 1997.
The
article generated many rejoinders, so many that I kept a Xerox box
on each side of my desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail. But
one letter I received defied my filing system. It was from the
pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind
and inquiring letter. Ken Smith encouraged me to explore the kind
of questions I admire: How did you arrive at your interpretations?
How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? Ken didn't
argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the
presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn't know how to respond
to it, so I threw it away.
Later
that night, I fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back
on my desk, where it stared at me for a week, confronting me with
the worldview divide that demanded a response. As a postmodern
intellectual, I operated from a historical materialist worldview,
but Christianity is a supernatural worldview. Ken's letter
punctured the integrity of my research project without him knowing
it.
Friends
with the Enemy
With
the letter, Ken initiated two years of bringing the church to me,
a heathen. Oh, I had seen my share of Bible verses on placards at
Gay Pride marches. That Christians who mocked me on Gay Pride Day
were happy that I and everyone I loved were going to hell was
clear as blue sky. That is not what Ken did. He did not mock. He
engaged. So when his letter invited me to get together for dinner,
I accepted. My motives at the time were straightforward: Surely
this will be good for my research.
Something
else happened. Ken and his wife, Floy, and I became friends. They
entered my world. They met my friends. We did book exchanges. We
talked openly about sexuality and politics. They did not act as if
such conversations were polluting them. They did not treat me like
a blank slate. When we ate together, Ken prayed in a way I had
never heard before. His prayers were intimate. Vulnerable. He
repented of his sin in front of me. He thanked God for all things.
Ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. And because Ken
and Floy did not invite me to church, I knew it was safe to be
friends.
I
started reading the Bible. I read the way a glutton devours. I
read it many times that first year in multiple translations. At a
dinner gathering my partner and I were hosting, my transgendered
friend J cornered me in the kitchen. She put her large hand over
mine. "This Bible reading is changing you, Rosaria," she
warned.
With
tremors, I whispered, "J, what if it is true? What if Jesus
is a real and risen Lord? What if we are all in trouble?"
J
exhaled deeply. "Rosaria," she said, "I was a
Presbyterian minister for 15 years. I prayed that God would heal
me, but he didn't. If you want, I will pray for you."
I
continued reading the Bible, all the while fighting the idea that
it was inspired. But the Bible got to be bigger inside me than I.
It overflowed into my world. I fought against it with all my
might. Then, one Sunday morning, I rose from the bed of my lesbian
lover, and an hour later sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed
Presbyterian Church. Conspicuous with my butch haircut, I reminded
myself that I came to meet God, not fit in. The image that came in
like waves, of me and everyone I loved suffering in hell, vomited
into my consciousness and gripped me in its teeth.
I
fought with everything I had.
I
did not want this.
I
did not ask for this.
I
counted the costs. And I did not like the math on the other side
of the equal sign.
But
God's promises rolled in like sets of waves into my world. One
Lord's Day, Ken preached on John 7:17: "If anyone wills to do
[God's] will, he shall know concerning the doctrine" (NKJV).
This verse exposed the quicksand in which my feet were stuck. I
was a thinker. I was paid to read books and write about them. I
expected that in all areas of life, understanding came before
obedience. And I wanted God to show me, on my terms, why
homosexuality was a sin. I wanted to be the judge, not one being
judged.
But
the verse promised understanding after obedience. I wrestled with
the question: Did I really want to understand homosexuality from
God's point of view, or did I just want to argue with him? I
prayed that night that God would give me the willingness to obey
before I understood. I prayed long into the unfolding of day. When
I looked in the mirror, I looked the same. But when I looked into
my heart through the lens of the Bible, I wondered, Am I a
lesbian, or has this all been a case of mistaken identity? If
Jesus could split the world asunder, divide marrow from soul,
could he make my true identity prevail? Who am I? Who will God
have me to be?
Then,
one ordinary day, I came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. In this
war of worldviews, Ken was there. Floy was there. The church that
had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. And
I was a broken mess.
Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything
that I loved. But
the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my
world.
I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make
right my world. I drank, tentatively at first, then passionately,
of the solace of the Holy Spirit. I rested in private peace, then
community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where
one calls me "wife" and many call me "mother."
I
have not forgotten the blood Jesus surrendered for this life.
And
my former life lurks in the edges of my heart, shiny and still
like a knife.
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