Rosaria Butterfield

Butterfield is more widely known today for the autobiography she published, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into the Christian Faith, in which she tells about her transformation from a professor raised in Catholicism who for a period of eight years identified as a lesbian to, after falling in love with one of her research subjects for an uncompleted manuscript on psychoanalysis and the homosocial evangelical organization Promise Keepers,[2] leaving her partner and becoming the wife of a Reformed Presbyterian Church pastor and homeschooling mother.[3] Following these conversions, Butterfield developed a ministry to college students and frequently speaks in churches and universities about her experience. She has taught and ministered at Geneva College. She now lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband, Kent Butterfield, and their children.

In her books, she describes how she decided to be a lesbian from ages 28 to 36. She does not identify herself as "ex-gay" and does not think gay Christians should identify as gay Christians. She believes that "[t]he job of the adjective is to change the noun."[4] Butterfield has criticized conversion therapy for contending that the "primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God's gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ's body and still struggle with sexual temptation." Butterfield suggests this is a version of the prosperity gospel.[5] She has written several best-selling books against what she perceives as prosperity gospel.