Reckoning with Faith with Barrett Sprowson

When you think back on your religious past, are there memories that make you cringe or worse?

Perhaps you recall speaking in ways that you now find upsetting or even abhorrent.
Maybe it’s a youth group skit that you remember with embarrassment.

For many people, there are more troubling aspects of their religious past. Looking back, we might realize that we were part of a high-control religious system that fostered, and sometimes hid, abuse.

Coming to terms with the past may mean walking away from faith altogether. It may also mean a kind of growth in faith: still believing, but believing very differently than before.

Barrett Sprowson now lives in Vancouver, but he grew up in Zimbabwe.

In 2024, the Archbishop of Canterbury resigned over an abuse scandal in the Church of England. Barrett was a teenager at a camp in Zimbabwe where the abuser, John Smyth, assaulted multiple victims. Smyth had abused minors years earlier in England, but the case was covered up.

For Barrett, the camp in Zimbabwe was part of his Christian discipleship and formation. He now sees Christian faith differently than he did then. It is not only about coming to terms with proximity to an abuser, but also about grappling with how certain ways of understanding faith and the world can be shaped more by control and rigidity than by growth in compassion and love for all people.

Referenced in this episode:

See No Evil, two-part documentary released on Channel 4 in the UK, December 2025