The book’s chief value is Butterfield’s blunt examination of how the church, and its culture, first appeared to her. In this book, she addresses many of the stereotypes that abundantly churched people (often unintentionally) foster about non-Christians. And she explains how the Body of Christ both failed and reached her as the Spirit began His work in her soul

Butterfield, Rosaria Champagne. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: an English professor’s journey into Christian faith. 2012: Crown & Covenant. ISBN 978-1-884527-38-8.

What do non-Christians think when they visit our church?

I’ve had the experience of being a visitor myself, of course, but when a church-literate person like me visits another congregation, I’m poised to feel comfortable: same Body, same Bible, same Lord. But what about someone from outside the Christian community, someone totally new to the church experience, someone who doesn’t already love Christ?

How can I welcome these souls?

I discovered part of the answer while reading Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s spiritual autobiography The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. In her own words: “My Christian memoir. . .seeks to uncover the hidden landscape of the Christian life in its whole context, warts and all. . .I share what happened in my private life 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.”

The book’s chief value is Butterfield’s blunt examination of how the church, and its culture, first appeared to her. In this book, she addresses many of the stereotypes that abundantly churched people (often unintentionally) foster about non-Christians. And she explains how the Body of Christ both failed and reached her as the Spirit began His work in her soul.

Hers is the story of coming to Christ, from the perspective of an intellectually accomplished woman who, with great sincerity, believed the tenants of secular feminism. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield is now a pastor’s wife.

As I told my husband, Butterfield has street cred. She can criticize (always with honesty, always with grace) mistakes of church leadership—because she is now serving the church. She can question the assumptions of many homeschooling families—because she is now homeschooling mom of four. She speaks as one with authority when she proposes counter-arguments to Christian myths about infertility, academia, and homosexual sin because she has Been. There. Done. That.

The thesis of her book, and one that was powerfully convicting to me, is Butterfield’s assertion that Christianity is not primarily a culture or lifestyle. We know Christianity is all about belonging to Christ. Of course. But, on this side of redemption, we often act and speak like Christianity is entirely about the way we raise our kids or vote in the election or relate to our husbands.

And this is noted by outsiders—with distrust.

Butterfield says of her life prior to conversion:

“Here is one of the deepest ways Christianity scared me: the lesbian community was home and home felt safe and secure; the people that I knew the best and cared about were in that community; and, finally, the lesbian community was accepting and welcoming while the Christian community appeared (and too often is) exclusive, judgmental, scornful, and afraid of diversity. What also scared me is that while Christianity seemed like just another worldview. . .Christians claimed that their worldview and all of the attending features that I saw—Republican politics, homeschooling biases, refusal to inoculate children against childhood illnesses, etc.—had God on its side.

“Christians still scare me when they reduce Christianity to a lifestyle and claim that God is on the side of those who attend to the rules of the lifestyle they have invented or claim to find in the Bible.”

This is not the angry ranting of someone who has been wronged by the church. This is the loving instruction of a mother whose greatest desire is the spiritual maturity of her family.

Time fails me to tell what she says about the benefits of serving vegetarian meals, the off-putting language of Christian campuses, and what sins homosexuality and heterosexuality have in common (hint: almost everything.)

You’ll just have to read it.

A friend recently emailed me after reading this book: “I can’t even put into words right now how spiritually beneficial it is!”

Editor’s Note:  The Aquila Report previously published a review of this same book.
Megan Hill is a PCA pastor’s wife and regular contributor to The Aquila Report. She and her mother write Sunday Women, a blog about ministry life, where this article first appeared; it is used with permission.