THE day a Newcastle child sex survivor revealed his battle with the Anglican Church and the NSW criminal justice system for a television series screening from tonight, cameramen cried.
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Producer Paula Bycroft hadn't seen anything like it before.
"You couldn't hear a pin drop on the set and when the cameramen came back into the control room they were all crying. The way he tells his story, it's hard to look away," Ms Bycroft said.
Steve Smith is the only agnostic among nine committed Christians in the SBS series Christians Like Us starting tonight.
The survivor of serious and long-term sexual abuse by Newcastle Anglican priest George Parker spent one week living in a house with Christians ranging from an Anglican woman priest to a progressive Catholic, evangelicals, a Mormon and a gay Baptist.
"Of all the people in the house he had the most to lose as a survivor telling his story to a group of committed Christians," Ms Bycroft said.
Of all the people in the house he had the most to lose.
- Christians Like Us producer Paula Bycroft of Newcastle abuse survivor Steve Smith.
But the result is extraordinary television, she said.
"Steve was the voice of modern Australia. He wasn't afraid to challenge the Christians about their attitudes on issues like objections to women priests or gay people or abortion. His own story is about the relentless search for justice and he demonstrates it in the house as well in the way he questions the others about the consequences of their beliefs," Ms Bycroft said.
He was selected from among many survivors who gave evidence during the five years of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Mr Smith was the last person to give evidence at a public hearing, after shocking revelations about his treatment by the church and in the criminal justice system after he made a statement to police.
Mr Smith said he was confronted by the distance between the teachings of Christ and the kind of Christianity practised by some of the people he met.
"There was a lot of quoting from the Bible, but there didn't seem to be a lot of Jesus Christ in what some of them were saying," he said.
After he revealed his abuse one house member approached him and said: "Jesus weeps for you".
"I just turned and walked away. It's drivel. Jesus can weep all he likes but the question someone like me asks is: 'Where was Jesus when all of this was happening'?"
Ms Bycroft said Christians Like Us was a logical follow-up to the previous SBS series Muslims Like Us.
"We did Muslims Like Us because a lot of people don't understand the Muslim faith. People think they know Christianity but I feel they don't realise the spectrum of belief among Christians in modern Australia.
"We wanted to shine a light on a religion that's declining in this country and that's not one thing, and we wanted to put that into the context of the terrible child sexual abuse that's occurred within churches, and the consequences of that," Ms Bycroft, who grew up Catholic, said.
"It was a very intriguing show to make."
Christians Like Us airs over two nights at 8.35pm tonight and on April 10 on SBS.
