Rosaria Butterfield: From Lesbian Activist and Queer Theory Professor to Christian

Rosaria Butterfield once taught queer theory, worked in LGBTQ activism, helped shape policy, and says she taught thousands of students at Syracuse University to reject the Bible.

Today, she is a Christian author, pastor’s wife, mother, and one of the most outspoken Christian voices on sexuality, gender, repentance, and identity.

Her transformation was not immediate, simple, or painless.

In this episode of Nothing Left Unsaid, Rosaria sits down with Tim Green and Troy Green to tell the story of how a lesbian activist professor who intended to challenge Christianity ultimately became convinced that the worldview she had built her life around was wrong.

“I thought I could dismantle the Bible in a few hours,” she recalls. Instead, after repeatedly reading Scripture, she says she reached a very different conclusion: “I had bet my life on the wrong worldview.”

Rosaria Butterfield Before Christianity

Before her Christian conversion, Rosaria Butterfield was a professor at Syracuse University working in English, women’s studies, critical theory, and queer theory.

She was not merely observing the gay rights movement from the sidelines. She describes herself as a lesbian activist professor who wrote policy, ran LGBTQ student groups, directed dissertations in queer theory, and regarded her activism as an important part of both her personal life and academic work.

Looking back, Rosaria says:

“I taught thousands of Syracuse University college students to despise the Bible, which is a book I love now more than anything in the world.”

She now believes that history gives her a particular responsibility to speak publicly about questions surrounding Christianity, homosexuality, transgender identity, sexual ethics, and biblical authority.

But the path between those two lives began somewhere unexpected.

The Pastor Who Would Not Fit Her Expectations

While working on a book critical of Christianity, Rosaria wrote an article about the Promise Keepers for the Syracuse Post Standard.

The response brought both supportive and hostile letters. One letter, however, fit neither category.

It came from Pastor Ken Smith.

Smith invited her to talk. Rosaria initially saw him as something like an unpaid research assistant, someone who could help her understand the Christian worldview she intended to criticize.

One dinner at Ken and his wife’s home became another. Rosaria says the number eventually reached into the hundreds.

What caught her attention was not simply their kindness. It was Ken’s willingness to explain precisely where their worldviews diverged.

Rather than reducing their disagreement to sexuality alone, he told her that their deeper disagreement concerned the nature of truth itself.

Rosaria was intrigued.

Ken then challenged her to read the Bible seriously if she wanted to understand what Christians actually believed.

She accepted.

Trying to Disprove the Bible

Rosaria was an English professor who believed she knew how to interrogate a text.

She initially expected Christianity to collapse under serious examination.

“I thought I could dismantle the Bible in a few hours,” she says in the episode.

Instead, Ken placed her on an intensive reading program. Rosaria says she read through the Bible seven times during roughly her first year and a half of studying it.

Gradually, something changed.

She did not suddenly stop experiencing same sex attraction. Rather, she says her understanding of herself, God, authority, sin, and truth began to change.

One distinction became especially important.

Her lesbian life, she says, was unquestionably real. She had a partner, a home, a career, activism, and an entire community built around it.

“But the question is, was it true?” she recalls asking herself.

That distinction between what feels real and what is ultimately true became central to her conversion.

“I Realized That I Was the Enemy at the Table”

One of the defining moments in Rosaria Butterfield’s Christian testimony happened during dinner at Ken Smith’s home.

The group was singing Psalm 23.

Rosaria remembers hearing the reference to being in the presence of enemies and initially identifying herself as the person surrounded by hostile Christians.

Then her interpretation reversed.

“I realized that I was the enemy at the table,” she says.

The people she had regarded as ideological opponents had nevertheless invited her into their home, built a relationship with her, and continued talking with her honestly.

Rosaria describes this as “the beginning of my undoing.”

It is also one of the central themes of the episode.

How do you tell someone you believe they are profoundly wrong while continuing to treat them as someone worthy of love, hospitality, patience, and friendship?

For Rosaria, that question cannot be separated from the way she became a Christian herself.

The Cost of Rosaria Butterfield’s Conversion

Rosaria repeatedly describes her conversion as a “train wreck.”

Not because she came to regret Christianity, but because accepting it disrupted nearly every part of the life she had constructed.

Her career was built around ideas she could no longer teach in the same way.

Her social world was deeply connected to LGBTQ activism.

Many of the people affected were not distant political allies. They were friends.

“They held my secrets and I held theirs,” she says.

Rosaria says she ultimately left the academic career she loved and lost relationships and social capital in the process.

She describes the experience as genuinely traumatic.

At the same time, she says she concluded that she could no longer maintain two incompatible systems of belief simply to preserve the life she already had.

“I Wasn’t Converted Out of Homosexuality”

One of the most important distinctions Rosaria makes in the conversation concerns how people summarize her story.

A common version goes something like this:

She was gay.
She became a Christian.
She became straight.

Rosaria says that description misses the point.

“I actually wasn't converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief.”

Her conversion, as she understands it, was not fundamentally a change in sexual orientation. It was a change in whom she believed had authority to define her identity and determine what was true.

She says she eventually reached the point where she could distinguish between identity and desire:

“Gay is not who I am, it's how I feel.”

That distinction leads into one of the deepest sections of the conversation, where Tim and Rosaria discuss whether sexuality should become a defining identity for Christians and what it means to live with desires that may conflict with religious conviction.

Christianity, Homosexuality, and Repentance

Rosaria does not soften her theological position on homosexuality.

She argues from a traditional Christian understanding of sexual ethics and says that same sex desire should be understood within the broader Christian doctrine of sin rather than treated as a unique category.

But she also emphasizes that repentance is not an LGBTQ specific concept.

Every Christian, in her view, has desires and behaviors that must be brought into conformity with God.

During the episode she walks through a six part understanding of repentance drawn from Puritan theologian Thomas Watson, discussing recognition of sin, sorrow, confession, shame, change, and living differently.

Her broader argument is that Christianity does not simply ask people to suppress behavior.

It asks them to reconsider the authority of their desires themselves.

“My feelings aren't God,” she says. “God is God. And my feelings can be real, but they're not God.”

Rosaria Butterfield on LGBTQ Identity and Gay Christianity

The discussion eventually turns to one of the most contested questions within modern Christianity:

Can someone embrace historic Christian sexual ethics while continuing to identify as gay?

Rosaria’s answer is no.

She argues that Christian identity should be grounded primarily in union with Christ rather than sexual desire.

The episode explores her disagreement with approaches sometimes described as Side B Christianity, in which Christians may remain celibate while retaining gay or queer identity language.

Rosaria explains why she believes the disagreement is theological rather than merely semantic.

Tim also pushes the discussion toward the practical consequences of her position.

What happens when someone has prayed for decades and still experiences same sex attraction?

What should Christians say then?

What does it mean to fight a desire that may never completely disappear?

These questions move the conversation beyond Rosaria’s biography and into the lived implications of the theology she now teaches.

Hospitality Without Avoiding Disagreement

Despite the forcefulness of Rosaria Butterfield’s positions, one of her recurring themes is hospitality.

She argues that some of the most difficult conversations should happen in homes and relationships rather than through social media confrontation.

She repeatedly returns to Ken Smith as the model.

He did not affirm her worldview, but he also did not reduce her to a political cause.

He invited her to dinner.

He listened.

He challenged her.

He remained involved in her life.

Rosaria later discovered that Ken had deliberately never invited her to church during those early years because he considered her highly persuasive and worried about the influence she might have on his congregation.

His solution was memorable:

Rather than initially bringing Rosaria to church, he brought the church to Rosaria through sustained personal relationship.

That philosophy continues to influence Rosaria’s own emphasis on what she calls radically ordinary hospitality.

Truth, Cruelty, and Loving People You Disagree With

Tim presses Rosaria on an obvious tension.

If someone believes that refusing another person’s understanding of gender or sexuality is itself rejection, can insisting on what you believe to be true become unnecessarily cruel?

Rosaria distinguishes between deliberately humiliating people and refusing to affirm something she believes is false.

The disagreement remains sharp.

But the broader principle she argues for is that strong convictions should coexist with strong relationships.

She says it is easier to have strong words with someone when there is already a strong relationship.

That principle extends beyond LGBTQ issues.

Near the end of the conversation, Rosaria criticizes social media for creating a version of cultural engagement in which people can attack enemies without knowing them, helping them, or loving them.

For her, Christianity requires something more difficult.

Rosaria Butterfield on Feminism, Gender, and Modern Culture

The conversation also expands into feminism, transgender identity, gender, and changes within American culture.

Rosaria once worked within feminist theory but now rejects its underlying assumptions.

When Tim asks what modern feminism got right, her immediate answer is “nothing.”

She goes on to explain her view that feminism contributed to a separation between biological sex and cultural gender that later developed further within contemporary gender theory.

She also critiques some Christians who agree with her politically or theologically, arguing that having the correct position is not enough if truth has not become a lived virtue.

The episode therefore does not simply ask what Rosaria believes.

It asks how those beliefs should shape the way Christians actually live.

What Jesus Promises When Everything Else Is Gone

Toward the end of the conversation, Tim moves away from cultural disputes and asks a more fundamental question.

Both Tim and Rosaria have experienced lives divided into a before and an after.

For Rosaria, that dividing line was conversion.

For Tim, living with ALS has transformed nearly every aspect of ordinary life.

So Tim asks what Christianity ultimately promises when everything else is stripped away.

Rosaria’s answer centers on resurrection, union with Christ, the church, family, and the Christian hope of a restored body.

The exchange brings the conversation back to its central subject.

Beneath the disagreements about homosexuality, queer theory, gender, feminism, politics, and culture is a more basic question:

What is ultimately true, and what are you willing to reorganize your life around if you become convinced of it?

A Conversation About More Than Sexuality

It would be easy to describe this episode simply as the story of a former lesbian who found Jesus.

That is part of Rosaria Butterfield’s story, but it is not the whole story.

This conversation is ultimately about worldview.

It is about whether identity is something we discover within ourselves or receive from somewhere outside ourselves.

It is about whether feelings can be both genuine and mistaken.

It is about what happens when intellectual conviction collides with relationships, career, community, and personal history.

And it is about whether people who profoundly disagree can still sit together at the same table.

Rosaria’s answers are uncompromising and, at times, controversial. Some listeners will strongly agree with her conclusions. Others will strongly reject them.

But her story raises questions that extend well beyond one debate.

What happens when the ideas around which you built your life no longer seem true?

What would it cost to change?

And would you be willing to pay that price?

Watch or listen to the full episode of Nothing Left Unsaid with Tim Green and Troy Green to hear Rosaria Butterfield tell the story in her own words and discuss Christianity, homosexuality, LGBTQ identity, queer theory, repentance, gender, feminism, hospitality, faith, and the worldview transformation that changed the direction of her life.