The Changing Christian Landscape with Kent & Rosaria Butterfield

In this deep-dive episode, Rosaria and Kent Butterfield share their insights on why the Reformed faith is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate in an age of "easily-believism" and political fads. Rosaria critiques the rise of "Third-Wayism" and the theological errors surrounding human sexuality, arguing that transgenderism is a form of transhumanism that denies the goodness of God's creation. They emphasize that true repentance involves more than just a change of mind; it requires a genuine sorrow for sin and a turning toward God's law.

The conversation also turns toward the health of the local church, warning against the "celebrity culture" and "rockstar bishops" that often plague online ministries and parachurch organizations. By looking at the importance of confessionalism and church polity, Kent and Rosaria explain how the dining room table—not the influencer platform—is the primary place for exhortation and hospitality. They offer a sobering but hopeful call for Christians to prioritize the local church as the true bride of Christ.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introductions
06:45 - Modern Trends & Fads
08:30 - Being Reformed in America
11:40 - Repentance & Confessing Sin
14:20 - Human Sexuality & Total Depravity
15:25 - The 6 Signs of Repentance
19:20 - The Danger of "Third-Way" Theology
21:30 - Transgenderism as Transhumanism
28:40 - Issues with Modern Christian Nationalism
38:35 - Why Church Polity Matters
42:00 - Parachurches vs. The Local Church
46:50 - The Influence of Money & Platforms
50:00 - Women’s Ordination Concerns
1:00:00 - Celebrity Culture in the Pulpit
1:07:40 - Exhortation at the Dining Table

Guest Information:
Dr. Rosaria Butterfield: A former tenured professor of English and women's studies at Syracuse University, converted to Christ in what she describes as a train wreck. She is an author and speaker married to Kent Butterfield.
Website: rosariabutterfield.com

Pastor Kent Butterfield: Pastor of First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham. He is a graduate of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary and has a background in logistics and analysis with the FBI.
Website: https://www.firstrpcdurham.org/

Mentions:
Westminster Seminary, Crown and Covenant, PCUSA, Aristotle, Ephesians 5, Thomas Watson

Pastor Kent Butterfield has made North Carolina his adopted home after living in Seattle, Hawaii, California, New Jersey and recently Pennsylvania and Virginia. He graduated with a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina. His work experience has been in property manage-ment, logistics, background investigations and as contract analyst with the FBI. He and his wife Rosaria have been married since 2001 and have adopted four children. He is a graduate of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Contact:
Email: kentbutterfield@yahoo.com
Phone: (571) 439-2033

Rosaria Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, converted to Christ in what she describes as a train wreck. Her memoir, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith (Crown and Covenant, 2012), chronicles her conversion. Rosaria is married to Kent, a Reformed Presbyterian pastor in North Carolina. She is a mother, grandmother, author, and speaker.

Raised and educated in liberal Roman Catholic settings, Rosaria loved books and philosophy. In her late twenties, allured by feminist philosophy and LGBTQ+ politics, she adopted a lesbian identity. Rosaria earned her PH.D. from The Ohio State University (1992), then served in the English department and women's studies program from 1992 to 2002, earning tenure in 1999. Her primary academic field was critical theory, specializing in queer theory. Her historical field was 19th-century literature, informed by Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin, with a special interest in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She advised LGBTQ+ student groups, co-authored Syracuse University’s domestic partnership policy for same-sex couples, and actively lobbied for LGBTQ+ legal advancements alongside her lesbian partner.

In 1997, while Rosaria was researching the Religious Right “and their politics of hatred against people like me,” she wrote an article against The Promise Keepers. Local Reformed Presbyterian pastor Ken Smith responded to that article, and Rosaria regularly met with Ken and his wife, Floy, over dinners in their home. Ken and Floy became a resource on the Religious Right and the Bible they loved. Eventually, they became her confidantes. In 1999, after reading through the Bible multiple times under Ken and Floy’s care, Rosaria converted to Christianity.

Rosaria has written four books: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown and Covenant, 2012), detailing her cataclysmic conversion and the Lord’s beautiful faithfulness. Openness Unhindered (Crown and Covenant, 2015) answers many of the questions Rosaria received about identity, repentance, and faith before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision (2015). The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018) chronicles how the Lord used a humble couple’s simple invitation to dinner to draw her - a radical, committed unbeliever—to himself. Inviting readers into her house, Rosaria shows how we can use hospitality in evangelism in a world that increasingly despises Christianity. In Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age (Crossway, 2024), Rosaria identifies the cataclysmic shift against the Christian faith in our post-Obergefell world by identifying how LGBTQ+ has become the reigning idol of our day codified into law. Offering gospel hope to people trapped in the lies of our culture and helping parents of children who have become casualties of these lies, Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age helps Christians “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and to do so with joy.