Presbyterian minister John Shuck doesn’t believe in God. His progressive Beaverton church challenges traditional ideas of Christianity.
The Rev. John Shuck doesn’t believe in God. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t consider himself a Christian.
Shuck, who has been a Presbyterian minister for 25 years, is the pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Shuck sat down with Street Roots in his office at Southminster to talk about what it looks like to be a minister who doesn’t believe in God, his own journey to the ministry, and how the subversive tradition of the “Radical Jesus” can inform resistance today during the Trump era.
“Christianity, and there are different kinds of Christianity, but the main one that most people know is about believing stuff,” Shuck said. “You believe things about Jesus, things about God, things about the Bible, all that kind of thing. Well, when things happen in science, and those beliefs really are no longer credible in a literal sense, what happens? Well, churches tend to put a ceiling on that, and my ministry always has been to break the ceiling.”
Shuck grew up as an evangelical Baptist and broke away from it in high school. He didn’t return to Christianity until he was an adult working as a professional radio announcer when he followed his wife into a Presbyterian church in Auburn, Wash. The minister there ultimately inspired him to pursue a career in Presbyterian ministry.
“One of his first sermons was about evolution in a positive way,” Shuck said. “I grew up hearing that was a bad thing. He was from South Africa, and he had worked hard in helping dismantle apartheid. So there was a social justice element right there that attracted me. I felt that going into ministry was a way to deal with things that were honest and true – and also social justice. It was a place where those sorts of questions could be addressed. And I found that to be true in many ways.”
He attended Princeton Seminary in New Jersey and went on to serve at four churches over the next 25 years, landing at Southminster four years ago.
Shuck believes that in the face of science, commonly accepted Christian beliefs don’t hold up: that God is a supernatural force or being, Jesus rose from the dead, the Bible is a divine revelation and an afterlife awaits the dead.
Instead, he believes that the Bible is a human product, that religion is a human construct, and that Christianity is a culture that draws upon symbolism and tradition to create meaning in the present.
In Southminster, Shuck found a church with progressive ideologies and a social justice consciousness that was already challenging traditional ideas of Christianity and what is acceptable within it.
“I think what happens is the church oftentimes escapes,” Shuck said. “It gets controlled by conservative forces, and it becomes a repository for conservative social mores. But there’s also a subversive tradition in it. And that’s what I saw when you asked me about what Southminster is. I saw that there, and my congregation I’ve served, too, has been that way. Not all (churches) are. There are few that take the lead on issues of social justice.”
Shuck finds and emphasizes resistance against oppression in many Bible stories that are not commonly thought of as being rooted in social justice. As Christmas approaches, Shuck reframes the birth of Jesus within this subversive tradition.
The Christmas story starts with Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Joseph, her husband, looking for room at the inn because they needed to be counted by the Roman Empire for the census. What is rarely emphasized in this Christmas story is that the occasion for Mary and Joseph’s trek to Bethlehem was because they, as natives of the land, were occupied by the Roman empire and subject to Roman rule.
“The whole story is based right within oppression itself,” Shuck said. “Both of these Christmas narratives, both in (the books of the Bible) Matthew and Luke, come out of a recognition that we are occupied. And we don’t ever hardly ever talk about that as Christmas. We don’t even read our own texts. We mix them together and make them be magical.
“And magic is good; it’s nice to have that sense in which the veil between the sacred and divine is thin, and Christmas night has that to it. But we also have to remember that we are talking about people who are resisting occupation, and the story is that you don’t escape occupation. You actually are within it, and finding hope within it.”
Shuck compares the Christmas story to Trump’s recent decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and, more locally, to gentrification in the Portland metro area.
“What is it that the Palestinians do?” Shuck said. “The resistance is staying on the land. There’s an aspect of when all the forces are working against you, sometimes staying on the land is what you got. And that, I think, is a crucial part of resisting oppression and inequality, is sometimes just standing where you can until a tipping point is reached, where change can happen.”
This Christmas story is only the beginning of a tradition of resistance in Bible stories concerning Jesus.
“Jesus was executed by the Roman Empire for sedition, and he was legally executed. So what does that mean? The Empire executes your founder. Where does that put you, in terms of empires? And it’s certainly true that the United States is an empire.”
Shuck sees many parallels between the Roman Empire of Jesus’ time and the United States of today, with military bases all over the world in order to “secure natural resources and political advantage,” Shuck said.
So what responsibility, in Shuck’s view and the view of his church, do Christians have, in terms of oppression and resistance?
“I think we have an illusion about the U.S. as some kind of moral light on the hill, and the fact is our history shows otherwise, and we’re not really honest with that. It’s built on slavery, it’s built on genocide. Telling those hard truths is an important part of what the church should do in order for it to reach the next step of being able to address them, and move beyond them, and heal from them, and make restitution for them.”
Southminster has been involved in multiple social justice causes. They led the charge to get LGBTQ folks included in Presbyterian marriage vows, which passed in 2015 – a movement close to Shuck’s own heart.
“That was an attractive part to me (of Southminster), because I personally have been involved in that a long time,” Shuck said as he turned around and pointed to a framed wedding picture hanging in his office. “That’s my daughter and her wife up there. Actually, that marriage was illegal from the Presbyterian standpoint. At that time, the Presbyterian church hadn’t allowed ministers to do that.”
Besides its advocacy for LGBTQ justice, Southminster has also been involved in interfaith dialogue, houselessness advocacy and awareness, and politics. They host events in partnership with the Muslim mosque across the street as well as the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice.
They have done a pulpit exchange with Maranatha Church, a majority African-American church, hoping to build bridges in order to work together against racism. They have hosted different seminars, panels and film viewings to raise awareness and build connections with other communities. Southminster has hosted homeless advocates to speak, a trans* awareness panel, and seminars on the “Political Jesus,” among others. They also supported Measure 97, which would have removed the cap on the corporate gross sales tax.
Shuck acknowledges that many other churches do not have the commitment to social justice or accepting views that Southminster does. However, he has boundless hope for people to change their minds when it comes to issues like LGBTQ justice and justice for houseless folks, issues that he believes Jesus, were he living today, would be fighting for.
“When people believe things about others, I never regard that as permanent,” Shuck said. “I regard that as an opportunity; we can all expand our thinking. I think people have an amazing ability to change, and I’ve just seen so many people be able to change, and I believe that. But that doesn’t mean that I’m Pollyanna about it, because there are some people who won’t. And in those cases, you’ve got to stand your ground for what you think is right.”
* An asterisk is sometimes added to the term “trans” to include not only trans men and trans women but a broad spectrum of transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming identities.
