Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

3.75 stars

This was a hard book to rate and review, because it was a little misleading, in my opinion. Supposedly, it’s about hospitality. However, the first half or so of the book is more about God’s design for sexuality and the way churches are to function. There’s a lot about church discipline in these pages. These things weren’t bad, but they were indirectly, instead of directly, related to hospitality and so I was frustrated for a good portion of the book.

However, when Butterfield does actually get around to talking about hospitality, specifically, and even when talking about what our relationships with God should look like, more generally, there are so many good points and quotes. I wrote down a couple pages’ worth, they were so good!

There were a few things here and there that rubbed me the wrong way, or that maybe I have a slightly different belief about than the author has, but the only things I feel worth mentioning are the cursing and the potential bragging.

When quoting others who used curse words, she included them in the book, which I found completely unnecessary. It would have been enough to state that someone cursed. No one needs to know the exact words these people used - they were irrelevant to the stories - and because we’re reading them, they’re entering our minds. It’s one thing to hear these words from real people we’re interacting with in our own personal lives, and it’s another thing to read them in a book, by a Christian, that could have been edited more thoughtfully but wasn’t.

And because she drew from her own life exclusively for the stories in this book, the tone frequently sounds a bit arrogant, like she’s doing nearly everything "best," or at least better than 99% of other, more sinful, Christians. Parts of it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I would have liked to hear more about hospitality she received, instead of primarily about all the good things she and her family do.

Actually, one more thing: She repeated the phrase "radically ordinary hospitality" so many times that if they were put into one place, would probably add up to a few pages. The repetition drove me nuts, but the phrasing did, too. "True hospitality" is more accurate and a lot less wordy!

Overall, though, there was a lot of good here.… (mais)

This was a frustrating book to try to rate. I found myself agreeing with her in one sentence, and disagreeing in the very next one - and then repeated that throughout the whole book.

Due to the title, I expected the bulk of this book to focus on her wrestling with the Christian faith pre-conversion (similar to how Nabeel Qureshi wrote his memoir [b:Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity|18289396|Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity|Nabeel Qureshi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386802223s/18289396.jpg|25818274]), but she spends just a couple chapters quickly wrapping up this part of her life.

She then jumps into defending her fringy, very Reformed (Calvinistic) denomination, and attacking other Christians who don't believe what she believes, then complains that these Christians are not humble and kind enough to embrace others who disagree with them on issues.

Her writing was drenched in pride masking as humility.

Even though I felt like getting into the adoptions of her children didn't fit with the supposed theme of the book, I'm interested in foster care and adoption, so thought this part would still be worth reading. I was very turned off to hear her not-so-secret thoughts of teenage birth parents:

"[My husband and I] were surprised and horrified to learn that even Christian crisis pregnancy centers encourage teenagers to try to parent their children rather than consider the adoption alternative." (p 119) Butterfield then goes on to essentially say that all these children will end up in foster care because their parents are sinners.

Some of her "Christian" jargon also turned me off a bit. I'm a Christian, but I don't use (and have never before heard used) terms like "covenant homes" when referring to a nuclear family comprised of Christian parents. Other parts of her language were very "intellectual" for lack of a better term. I get that she's a super-smart English professor, but it came across as pretentious.

Having said all that, there was some good here!

Certainly, her call to Christians to treat those in the LGBTQ community with more love is needed! Even her desire to show hospitality to others is something that should be present in the Christian church, but is all too often lacking.

I appreciated her thoughts on sexual sin, and how homosexuality is not "worse" than other sexual sins:

"To a good Christian, sex is God's recreation for you as long as you play in God's playground (marriage). No way, Jose. Not on God's terms. What good Christians don't realize is that sexual sin is not recreational sex gone overboard. Sexual sin is predatory. It won't be "healed" by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing, to the sexual sinner, is death: nothing more and nothing less.... too many Christian fornicators plan that marriage will redeem their sin.... Christian masturbators plan that marriage will redeem their patterns.... Christian internet pornographers think that having legitimate sex will take away the desire to have illicit sex. They're wrong.... Christians act as though marriage redeems sin. Marriage does not redeem sin. Only Jesus himself can do that." p 83 (emphasis mine)

Another thought on marriage:

"I've come to note that normally moderate non-pretentious Christians tend towards extreme emotional excess in the areas of weddings and baby showers. This particular weakness had not been mine to witness until I became the subject of this attention. I found this kind of attention uncomfortable and annoying. It seemed as though people that I thought were my friends saw me as suddenly more legitimate now that I was going to join the club of the married." p 53

I also liked this quote:

"We develop a taste for God's standards only by disciplining our minds, hands, money, and time. In God's economy, what we love we will discipline." p 30

So, there was good and bad here. It is a memoir, and at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that memoirs are by definition one person's thoughts about their own experiences and beliefs, so naturally they are highly subjective.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to others, but I also wouldn't attempt to dissuade anyone from reading it.… (mais)