This month we’re looking at “Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age,” by Rosaria Butterfield. No doubt many readers are already familiar with Butterfield, the former lesbian activist and tenured professor, now an author, pastor’s wife, and homeschool mom. (For those who are interested, she recounted her powerful story of coming to faith in “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert”).
Why do we find Butterfield’s testimony so appealing? In part, she stands as proof-of-concept that people caught in the LGBTQ+ lifestyle and ideology are not beyond the pale. I find her story both encouraging (that the gospel has power to transform) and convicting (that it’s wrong to think some people are beyond saving). “Five Lies” is different from her other books—less testimony, more practical theology. Butterfield mentions several times that “this is the world I helped create” (28), and one senses in this book her desire to undo the damage.
How can anyone distill the errors of our age into a handful of statements? Butterfield chose these five: homosexuality is normal; being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian; feminism is good for the world and the church; transgenderism is normal; and modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back. This list of lies isn’t meant to be comprehensive. Yet it’s easy to see that the thread of biblical authority runs through them all. Each one questions God’s good design and echoes that original lie —“Has God really said?”
Butterfield warns that these lies are no longer just something out there, but have crept into the church. Some evangelicals promote “Side B Christianity,” which approves of LGBTQ+ identity as long as it’s celibate. Others justify “Side A,” which approves of LGBTQ+ sexual relationships as well. Butterfield doesn’t equivocate: “Gay Christianity . . . denies the sinner repentance and immerses her in the futile task of trying to domesticate her sin” (108).
Butterfield sometimes surprised me with her bluntness and other times with her gentleness. She doesn’t shy away from unpopular truth that might step on some toes. Yet at times, she also addresses those caught in the lifestyle she once lived with compassion. She speaks from experience when she says, “acceptance is a great kindness, so learn the difference between acceptance and approval” (296).
Perhaps we feel that our conservative communities are immune from the societal pressure to approve the new morality. But maybe we aren’t as insulated as we think. I live in a small Midwestern town—with a lesbian couple across the street, transgender kids attending our church kid’s club, and many former Anabaptist friends who chose self-styled spirituality over church. As Butterfield says, “we all live in Babel now” (1). And we all face the temptation to soften difficult truth. Wherever the battle, our theological footing is only as strong as our commitment to biblical authority, because “a faulty interpretation that endorses sin in one context [will be] imported wholesale to another” (75).
Butterfield writes from a distinctively Presbyterian framework (references to covenant theology, Psalters, sacraments, and the Puritans sound foreign to my Anabaptist ears) and no doubt we would not agree with some of her beliefs and applications. That said, it’s encouraging to see other Christians making the costly choice of faithfulness over cultural relevance. Her book encourages us to do likewise—to resist the cultural current by refusing to believe the lies and by embracing God’s good design.