THE Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, lost her faith in God after reading in regards to the abuse that Josef Fritzl inflicted on his daughter Elisabeth.
In an interview with Amol Rajan, broadcast on BBC2 on Thursday evening, Ms Badenoch said that, growing up, she had believed that God “doesn’t test you greater than you possibly can bear”, and that she found strength in her faith when she was having a tough time.
But, she said, “no human being must have needed to experience” what Elisabeth endured. In 2009, Fritzl pleaded guilty to imprisoning his daughter in a basement for twenty-four years, where he raped her repeatedly.
“She prayed day-after-day to be rescued, and I believed, ‘I used to be praying for all varieties of silly things . . . why were those prayers answered, and never this woman’s prayers?’”, Ms Badenoch said.
Her faith in God was extinguished “like someone blew out a candle”, she said. Religion had been round her growing up, and she or he had believed in God, although she “wasn’t that religious”.
Ms Badenoch’s grandfather was a Methodist minister. She was born in London, and spent her childhood in Nigeria and the United States, before moving to the UK to review A levels on the age of 16.
At the time that the Fritzl case appeared within the news, Ms Badenoch was working in banking. She became the Conservative MP for Saffron Walden in 2017, and leader of her party after its election defeat last yr.
Ms Badenoch has previously described herself as a “cultural Christian”, and told the BBC that she was leaning into this more, suggesting that it was, perhaps, a results of “getting older and needing something to fill an area”.
“The world that we’ve got within the UK may be very much built on many Christian values,” she said.
Her husband, Hamish Badenoch, is a Roman Catholic, and the couple’s three children are being raised within the RC Church. According to reports, she has previously described herself as an “honorary Catholic”.
Last yr, when she was Minister for Equality, she defended the fitting of the Deputy First Minister of Scotland, Kate Forbes, to specific views on social issues that were informed by her Christian faith, saying: “If you’re asking me to sentence someone for his or her religious views, you’ve misunderstood the role of a Minister for Equality.”
