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Street Roots • Dec. 22-28, 2017 News Page 10 " I felt that going into m inistry was a way to deal with things that were honest and true — and also social justice. So 1 felt it was where those sorts of questions could be addressed." THE REV. JOHN SHUCK, S O U T H M IN S T E R P R E S B Y T E R IA N CHURCH M IN IS T E R P H O TO BY S A R A H H AN SELL The Rev. John Shuck talks with Street Roots in his office a t Southm inster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton. Christianity’s subversive tradition John Shuck, a pastor who believes God is a product o f mythology, frames the Christmas story as one of resistance B Y SARAH HANSELL S T A F F W R IT E R he 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 T 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. subversive tradition. Instead, he believes that the Bible is a The Christmas story starts with Mary, Jesus’ human product, that religion is a human construct, and that Christianity is a culture that mother, and Joseph, her husband, looking for room at the inn because they needed to be draws upon symbolism and tradition to create counted by the Roman Empire for the census. meaning in the present. What is rarely emphasized in this Christmas In Southminster, Shuck found a church with story is that the occasion for Mary and progressive ideologies and a social justice Joseph’s trek to Bethlehem was because they, consciousness that was already challenging as natives of the land, were occupied by the traditional ideas of Christianity and what is Roman empire and subject to Roman rule. acceptable within it. “The whole story is based right within “I think what happens is the church oppression itself,” Shuck said. “Both of these oftentimes escapes,” Shuck said. “It gets Christmas narratives, both in (the books of the controlled by conservative forces, and it Bible) Matthew and Luke, come out of a becomes a repository for conservative social recognition that we are occupied. And we don’t mores. But there’s also a subversive tradition ever hardly ever talk about that as Christmas. in it. And that’s what I saw when you asked me We don t even read our own texts. We mix about what Southminster is. I saw that there, them together and make them be magical. and my congregation I’ve served, too, has been And magic is good; it’s nice to have that that way. Not all (churches) are. There are few sense m which the veil between the sacred and that take the lead on issues of social justice.” lvme is thin, and Christmas night has that to Shuck finds and emphasizes resistance it. But we also have to remember that we are against oppression in many Bible stories that are not commonly thought of as being rooted in A series highlighting the role o f religious leaders and groups in Portland’s resistance movement See FAITH & JUSTICE, page 11
