Wooley: It turns out ScoMo is a non-believer

We always knew the ex-PM was a zealot for an extreme brand of Christianity but what is really alarming was this week’s revelation about him being a disbeliever in democracy, writes Charles Wooley

The surprise of the week was not what the former prime minister Scott Morrison believed in, but rather what he didn’t believe in.

In a sermon to Perth’s Victory Life Centre, a Pentecostal church run by the controversial anti-gay campaigner and former tennis champion Margaret Court, ScoMo completely stripped off the mask of rationality to trip the divine light fantastic with the man in the sky.

“We trust in Him. We don’t trust in governments. We don’t trust in United Nations,” ScoMo preached in his sermon last Sunday. “As someone who’s been in it, if you are putting your faith in those things, you are making a mistake.

“Firstly, they are fallible. I’m so glad we have a bigger hope.”

It wasn’t just surprising. It was also a little frightening that our former PM was so clearly not of this world.

Scott Morrison delivers a sermon at Margaret Court's church.

Here was someone we trusted to lead our nation from 2018 to 2022 effectively saying we shouldn’t have trusted him.

Now you don’t need to be a happy-clapping holy-roller like ScoMo to know that government can’t always be trusted. And the longer ScoMo reigned over us, the less we trusted his government. But always we maintain a naive hope that politicians who aspire to the highest office, even stabbing colleagues in the back to get there, might still retain a little faith in the process of democratic government. Otherwise, why bother?

Do we now fear, that at the end of his term in office the new prime minister Anthony Albanese will also astound by coming clean and saying, “Look, I didn’t believe in any of it. I only ever put my faith in the gods of branch stacking.”

Surely not. Let’s just hope ScoMo really was a one-off and we never again hear such occult nonsense and breathtaking hypocrisy from another Australian political leader.

And let’s hope too that we remember the old wisdom of the separation of Church and State. It was alarming to hear the ex-prime minister unmask himself as a disbeliever in democracy and a zealot for an extreme brand of Christianity, loosely known as Pentecostal. It is followed by only a quarter of a million Australians, or one per cent of us. By comparison 38.9 per cent of us recorded in the 2021 census as having no religion. And of the 43.9 per cent self-describing as Christian, it’s a fair bet that the vast majority of them don’t believe in the Pentecostal practices of faith healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues.

Now I really don’t mind what people believe until they start persecuting those who don’t believe the same thing. Which is precisely why we should keep church and state oceans apart.

Having unmasked himself, we have less trouble understanding why Morrison wasted so much time in an office he didn’t believe in. Ignoring foreign policy and the environment he pursued his obscure, dubious and divisive so called “religious freedom” legislation. Which would have allowed religious schools to beat up on teachers and students who didn’t conform with the prevailing doctrinal line on human sexuality.

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison sits at his home in the Sutherland Shire. Picture: Jeremy Piper

“But what would Jesus say?” I hear you ask.

Well apart from the injunction of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, I can’t think of anything the tolerant chippie from Nazareth had to say on the matter.

But extreme Christianity is as far from the Sermon on the Mount as is modern Communism from Marx.

Apart from not eating salad in third world countries, my travels around the planet have taught me one thing at least; that belief systems are too dangerous for human beings to handle. Giving most people a political or religious ideology can be in the end as dangerous as giving a razor blade to a baby. Someone always gets hurt.

ScoMo’s sermon this week reminded me of the plot of the sci-fi movies of my childhood.

Alien invaders lived among us, devilishly disguised as Earthlings. They worked to insinuate themselves into positions of power as captains of industry and even presidents. (The scenario is even more believable now than when I was a kid).

Then there came the dramatic, edge of the seat, Jaffa dropping scene, where the invader tore off his human mask to reveal his ghastly, reptilian, alien self.

I’m glad ScoMo repeated that scene this week.

Sometime during the last election campaign, I was starting to believe that the former PM really was just another Earthling. He seemed so much more credible than the forgetful, stumbling, bumbling Albo whose misfiring robotic wiring seemed in urgent need of Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: David Caird

It was a close thing. I was half-fooled, but fortunately, not so most Australians. While they weren’t all that keen on Albo, they knew for sure that ScoMo was not the real deal.

In the end ScoMo was wrong about what he doesn’t believe in. Even without divine guidance, sometimes democracy can get it right.

And I of little faith should have known better.

But now re-reading the sermon he gave last Sunday in Perth at the Court of Saint Margaret, I am not that sure we have been safely delivered from ScoMo.

He told the faithful that losing the last election was all part of God’s plan for him.

At this point I am again remembering those old Sci-fi movies: when the aliens seem to be defeated and while the Earthlings are celebrating, unnoticed in the background a flying saucer ascends into the heavens.

Could there be a sequel?

In the words of ScoMo this week, “Do you believe that if you lose an election that God still loves you and has a plan for you?” he asked the cheering worshippers.

“I do. I still believe in miracles. God has secured your future, all of it. Yeah, even that bit.”

As they said in old sci-fi flicks,

“To be continued.”