The Church of Scott the Denier

It's not just Jesus who forgives

I finally finished Scott Morrison’s memoir, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister's Testimony of God's Faithfulness, and it’s a lot. Fortunately, I was saved from any temptation to write a full review—after my brief palate-cleanser a few weeks ago—by the fact that the former editor of the Sydney Review of Books, Catriona Menzies-Pike, has written a great review for Crikey that covers all the issues I have with Morrison’s love-letter to himself.

In particular, Menzies-Pike highlights the fact that, for all his overt piousness, his conversations with Jesus, and his relentless quoting of Scripture—honestly, reading the memoir¹ you feel like the only book with more Biblical quotes in it is the Bible itself—Morrison’s faith is ultimately revealed as a meagre and self-obsessed version of Christianity, used less to advance the teachings of Jesus than to excuse or hide Morrison’s own political failures. Menzies-Pike writes:

I am not particularly troubled either by Morrison’s religious convictio…