Essay by Rev. David Felten on May 10, 2018

The following is taken from an interview with the Rev.
John Shuck on April 3, 2018. Recorded in an
out-of-the-way corner at Portland’s famed Powell’s
Books, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.
 

David Felten:.. Tell me about coming out as an atheist.

John Shuck:.. Well, that’s been a process – but I would blame it on religious education at seminary.

David Felten:..  That’s what people fear the most.

John Shuck:.. That’s exactly it. Don’t send people to seminary if you don’t want ministers to come back and talk about stuff. I went to Princeton, which is no liberal bastion. It’s basically a neo-orthodox school of Barth studies, right? But it was there that I learned about the historical critical method of reading the bible – and once you go there, once you actually learn it, appreciate it, and aren’t just fighting it, everything suddenly comes into question at the literal level.

David Felten:.. So, you then come down from the ivory tower into the welcoming arms of a congregation that wanted to hear all about historical, critical thinking.

John Shuck:..  Well, oddly enough, I did not. I started in 1992 at a congregation where I followed a fairly conservative minister. But within two years, the Jesus Seminar was featured on the cover of Time magazine and US News and it was church members who introduced me to John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. So, this popularized version of the historical Jesus was actually introduced to me by a church member who said, “Think about this.” I remember talking to my colleagues within the Presbytery and most of them were freaked out about it or dismissive: “Well, you know that isn’t that big a deal.”

David Felten:.. They didn’t like it.

John Shuck:  They felt like it was a problem to be solved. But for me, it was the coolest thing ever.

David Felten:.. Click here to read online and to share your thoughts It was an adventure to be had.

John Shuck:..  Yes. So, I said to the congregation, “This is what’s up” and asked, “What do you think about this?” I can’t say all, but many of them really liked it and appreciated it. What I remember saying way back then, in ’94, was, “As ministers, we’re really not supposed to say this stuff in church. We’re supposed to encourage you in faith, but I think you deserve to know what scholarship is about.”

David Felten:..  Being a little subversive?

John Shuck:.. Yeah. It is. My experience of people in church is that not everybody appreciates it, but there’s a group that genuinely appreciates this scholarship and finds it a way to strengthen their faith. I think the biggest thing I had to say was, “This isn’t necessarily the end of the road. It isn’t to the deep abyss of nothingness. You come out on the other side in some form or another.”

David Felten:..  Maybe the ambiguity of “some form or another” is what people are afraid of. After all, you’ve come out the other side as an atheist. How have you come to live that out? Is there a particular way you describe your atheism?

John Shuck:..  It’s a funny term, “atheist.” What does it mean? Well, the most precise definition of “theism” is believing in a supernatural God. I don’t. It may not be a technical definition, but I’m a person who does not put a lot of credibility in or care that much about supernatural things.

David Felten:..  What’s the difference between a humanist, a non-theist, and an atheist?

John Shuck:..  For practical purposes, I think they’re all the same thing. But I call myself a “Christian Atheist” because, in part, it’s so marvelously jarring. I think people have more of an acceptance of “Jewish Atheist” because there’s an ethnicity involved with being Jewish. But people have a hard time with “Christian Atheist.” I like Christianity, but I treat the symbols and ethics of Christianity from a humanist or natural point of view. In other words, I see all the stories of Christianity as human products of cultural evolution.

David Felten:..  Awhile back, there was a bit of a dust-up over a column you wrote for “The Friendly Atheist” blog. How did that all come about and what was the reaction?

John Shuck:.. It started back when I was in my previous church in Elizabethton, Tennessee. An article came out in our denominational publication, Presbyterians Today, that asked, “What do Presbyterians believe?” I looked through it all and said, “I don’t believe any of this.” I really don’t. All of these things: The Trinity, of Jesus being a certain way. I thought, “I’m just going to write down what I believe.” So, I wrote a blog post about things that I felt were true. For example, evolutionary science is true. The bible is human product. Jesus may have been an historical figure but most of the stories about him are legends. God is a symbolic name that we use for things we don’t understand or can’t grasp. I wrote that article and it raised a lot of heck. It got the Layman Magazine and other conservatives all upset and, as usual, they wanted to get me out of the denomination in some form or another.

That eventually kind of went its way before I moved to Oregon. Then Hemant Mehta of “The Friendly Atheist” got wind of it and asked me to write a column for him and so I did. The title he chose and I ended up agreeing with was, “I’m a Presbyterian Minister Who Doesn’t Believe in God.” That really wasn’t the focus of it, but that was the title and I understand how titles work. The real focus was, and the point I would still make, is, can we have a beliefless Christianity? Can we have a Christianity that isn’t focused on believing things, on reciting creeds? That was the value system I wanted to put out there: a beyond-belief kind of thing.

Anyway, that got picked up by conservative media and kind of went all over the place. We ended up having protestors at our church. Coincidentally, an article came out about my congregation at Southminster because the Presbyterian denomination just passed marriage equality. So right at the same time, the same week, we had an article about marriage equality and how our congregation had been helpful in that. When the protesters came, I wasn’t really sure which article they were upset about.

“Portland’s Free Preachers” filmed themselves yelling at people about their minister not believing in God and “you’re a bunch of homos!” and all this stuff. They were even yelling at our kids. It was an awful experience. The pastor at a neighboring church confronted them and said, “Hey you guys, this isn’t the way to do Jesus.” So, they went and yelled at his church, too. This was all within just two or three months of being at Southminster!

Anyway, it was Palm Sunday, which was nice, because I could use the protest as a sermon illustration of how confusing protests are and how sometimes you’re on one side, and sometimes you’re on another.

David Felten:..  And you’re still at Southminster.

John Shuck:..  Yes. I had to deal with all that with the church and I think I lost a few people. But, I actually gained a lot of respect. When people actually read the “Friendly Atheist” article, they realized, “Oh, I see what he’s saying,” and it really isn’t that radical. I was simply saying about Christianity what conservatives say about other religions: everyone else’s religion is mythology, but we would never say that about our religion, right? Our religion is “true.”

David Felten:..  Speaking of other religions, Southminster is across the street from an Islamic Center with which you’ve established a relationship. What do they think about you being out on the ragged edge of Presbyterianism?

John Shuck:.. I don’t know what they think about it. We have another Presbyterian congregation on the same corner. It’s Presbyterian Church of America. Very conservative.

They also have a dialog with the Islamic Center and, on one level, it’s probably a cleaner dialog because they’re both fighting over which version of God is “right.” I personally don’t care. I’m mostly into it for the social, political, theological big picture thing. I really don’t know what they feel about that, but I think they appreciate that we’re very much interested in having this relationship and a community with them. Islamophobia is hugely on the rise right now. Anti-Semitism is too, but especially since 9/11 (and now the Trump thing) Islamophobia has increased. That’s what we’re helping to put a stop to.

David Felten:..  Tell me about your experience with colleagues with whom you’ve had conversations along the lines of what we’ve been talking about today. What goes through the mind or heart of clergy who are struggling with being honest about where they’ve come to theologically? What have you heard from people about roadblocks?

John Shuck:..  First of all, I know it’s hard. This isn’t my first go-around with conflict – with either fellow clergy or others from the Right. So, I’m kind of used to it. It doesn’t scare me – and it can be scary. I mean, I have great sympathy for ministers who, for the most part, aren’t out there fighting battles. They’re trying to take care of their congregations, do their thing. When they see these people (on the right) who are policing the system and coming down hard on non-conformists, it’s intimidating.

David Felten:..  It makes you not want to be vulnerable that way.

John Shuck:..  Right. So, my role has become being one who says to the right wing, “You are not going to get away with silencing the rest of us.” That’s not always been my role – and maybe it hasn’t been enough – but I’m going to push back at the Right and say, “No. You don’t get away with that.”

David Felten:..  Would you say it’s more shaming or bullying – or both?

John Shuck:.. It’s a silencing. It’s an attempt to threaten people into silence with, “You can’t say this or you’re not Christian anymore – and we’ll belittle you in any way we can.” Ten or fifteen years ago it used to be really hard in our denomination – Presbyterians and all of the heresy business. My feeling was then as it is now: “You can’t get away with that.”

Sometimes, when I’m being a little cheeky with people who probably think like me but don’t want to say anything, I’ll say, “I think we’ve got to be honest with what we’re saying. What do we mean when we talk about resurrection? Do you really think that there’s a body that rose out of a tomb? If not, then say what you think it is.” We’ve been given so much double language to use. We’ve been trained to be able to talk about it in ways that don’t actually tell the truth. I think we’re paying the price for that.

David Felten:..  People know when we’re not being honest.

John Shuck:.. Yeah. And I think the modern new atheist movement is calling the Church out on that. That’s why Dawkins and Dennett and those guys ask, “What are you guys really saying?” From my perspective, they are calling us to be forthright and I think that’s a good thing.

David Felten:..  A pastor being forthright?!

John Shuck:..  Well, what’s a pastor to do? Help support the “truth” as it’s been received in the community? Or, is it about helping people discover what is true? Those two aren’t necessarily the same things. There’s a ceiling there. You can say truth, truth, truth – but when it hits the ceiling of creed, where you can’t go beyond a certain point, I think that ceiling needs to be broken down.

David Felten:..  There are a lot of folks who think that if that ceiling is shattered, it means the end of everything for Christianity as we know it.

John Shuck:..  I don’t think it’s the end of everything if that happens. There’s a great fear that if that happens, then the whole thing goes to hell, but I don’t see that being the case. I think it takes different shapes, but it doesn’t have to be the end of church.

David Felten:..  That might not be a bad thing.

John Shuck:.. You know, if the church ends, okay. The point is that the church isn’t the point. The point is truth and goodness. That’s got to continue.

~ Rev. David Felten with Rev. John Shuck

Click here to read online and to share your thoughts

About John Shuck: 
Once a professional radio announcer at stations in Boise and Seattle, Rev. Shuck has served as a Presbyterian pastor for 25 years. Through his blog, Shuck and Jive, John became known in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia as the “Radical Reverend.” His popularity (infamy?) lead to the development of his podcast, Religion for Life, which began broadcasting in 2012.

Now moved to Oregon, John is the full-time pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, Oregon. He currently hosts the radio program/podcast, “The Beloved Community” on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon. Since 2012, John has interviewed over 250 authors, scholars, and activists about social justice issues, religious scholarship, politics, sex, science, and more. The internet version of The Beloved Community, Progressive Spirit, can be subscribed to on iTunes and Podomatic. Be sure to visit John’s website by clicking HERE

About the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.

A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet.

David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children.

Q: By Ryan

Here’s my question: why is progressive Christianity so white? And who are the main non-white voices within the movement? Thank you so much.

Thanks for a great question Ryan. 

A few years back I was admin of an eight-thousand member progressive Christian community. At that time I asked the group why they thought there weren’t more black and latino voices participating in progressive Christianity, and there certainly was no clear consensus that came of it; but a few themes did bubble up.

We also ran some surveys in that group around that time (2014), and we concluded that the global community who labels themselves as “progressive Christian” was about 95% white at the time. We also determined that many blacks and latinos may not identify themselves as theologically “progressive Christians,” but they are often amongst the most socially progressive, especially as it regards issues of race, immigration, and income equality.

One of the key data points that stood out from that research was that the modern progressive Christian theological movement has been incubated in white and liberal academia over the past fifty years. And in general since it started as a white movement, it has continued to attract whites. It is sort of the natural order of things in humanity that white (or non-white) movements tend to stay mostly white (or non-white) -  although that is starting to change.

Another reason for the trend is that members of black and latino communities don’t tend to have such an easy opt-out option from their spiritual communities. In non-white communities, churches tend to be much more integral to social / business / spiritual constructs. Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was quite theologically progressive, but given the social work he had to do, talking extensively about the theological aspects of the faith was not a key mantle that he chose to highlight during his ministry.

When it comes to modern non-white progressive Christian voices, it has indeed been a challenge to find non-whites in the explicit “progressive Christian movement.” As I’ve talked to many people of color over the years I’ve found that many aren’t as hung up on the theology as whites tend to be. People of color tend more to be drawn to the spirituality and liberation aspects of the faith. Whether the Bible is literal or not is not often the key concern in non-white faith communities. In contrast, progressive Christianity has been a mainly white, academic, and affluent group, and it hasn’t appealed as much to the more charismatic and deeply spiritual crowd.

With all of that said, diversification is definitely happening with each passing year. I have seen a number of black females getting involved within the label. One example is Rev. Irene Monroe recently joining the Progressing Spirit lineup. And Toni Reynolds being named to the ProgressiveChristianity.org board of directors. Neither of these women were added explicitly because of their ethnicity, but it is evidence that the demographics are changing.

Of course, everything said here is based on generalizations and over-simplifications, but it is an attempt to look at a very complex subject in just a couple paragraphs. I, like you, am excited to see what is happening!

~ Eric Alexander

Click here to read and share online

Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and and is author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good.

 When the hurricane named ‘Dennis’ placed weary Floridians under water in the first major Caribbean disaster of 2005, their Governor Jeb Bush, reflecting on the recent pounding his state has taken, made an interesting, an almost stream of consciousness, observation. “I think there is a legitimate feeling,” he said, “Why me? What did I do wrong?”

Governor Bush was giving expression to a major tenet in a pre-Copernican God theology that finds ample space in the pages of the Bible. In the Noah story, for example, the weather is sent by God to punish people for their sins. Consistent with this biblical lesson, natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, Tsunami waves and droughts have throughout history been interpreted as a divine response to a real or imagined human failure. People prayed for weather changes and accompanied those prayers with promises of repentance and a pledge to future actions more pleasing to God. General George Patton in his diary attributed the fair weather that accompanied his military successes in France in 1944 and 1945 as a sign from God, who, he believed favored the Allies and hated the Germans. Since God was assumed to live just above the sky, divine direction of the weather was easy to imagine.

This childlike religious rhetoric is thus not the sole possession of a sitting governor. Indeed it permeates our culture on many levels. It is reflected by the fact that many people still view sickness as punishment. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ is a familiar refrain falling from the lips of the ill. Most significant of all this is, as I shall try to demonstrate, the view of God upon which religious leaders and institutions have always leaned to build their power.

We see this mentality being employed today by the Vatican, among television evangelists and in the words of many people in public life. Modern athletes seem to believe the God above the sky directs their fortunes. One sees an athlete making the sign of the cross before stepping into the batter’s box, or up to the free throw line. Others point to the sky in gratitude to the God who helped them strike out an opponent, hit a home run, or kick a winning field goal.

This theology also penetrates the way tragedies are interpreted. Survivors, who climb out of an airliner crash or escape a subway bombing, seem almost invariably to assume that God has spared their lives. The unspoken implication is that those who died deserved it or that God had no special plan for them beyond premature death.

What is it that gives such power to these primitive ideas that both athletes and presumably well-educated people in public life still think and talk this way? Is some basic human need met by this primitive theology? Does pious rhetoric blunt our thinking processes? Or does this tenacious idea simply reflect an ever present but seldom faced part of our humanity?

It is part of what it means to be human to yearn for some assurance that we are not alone in this vast and empty-feeling world. We are the only creatures whose minds are sufficiently developed to embrace the vastness of the universe. We alone live inside the meaning of time. This means that we can both anticipate impending disasters and embrace the fact that we will die. It is, therefore, the nature of human life to be chronically anxious. Both are the byproducts of self-consciousness. This anxiety and fear seems to compel us to create a divine supernatural God figure, powerful enough to be our protector. This deity must not be limited as we are, since that would not give us security. Human beings never escape that childhood memory of having an apparently all-powerful parent figure taking care of us. Finding ourselves alone in adulthood we place a divine parent figure called God into the sky where, unseen but ever watchful, this God can look after us. Then we ascribe to this God the qualities we lack. God’s immortality counters our mortality. God’s power counters our impotence. Once that definition is set, we begin to relate to this God exactly the way children relate to parents. We bargain with God, make our requests known to God, manipulate God, flatter God into getting our way, seek to win favor by keeping God’s rules, confess to God when we fail and always remember to say ‘thank you’ so that God will reward us for being a grateful child. This supernatural theistic religion is still very much alive in our churches. Claiming the ability to interpret how God will act and what will please the Holy One is both the source of ecclesiastical authority and the cause of our own spiritual immaturity. From this perspective we view sickness and tragedy as signs of divine anger, reflecting the world we have created with ourselves living at the center of it and God, understood as a heavenly “Father,” keeping things fair like a good parent should.

The result of this religious mentality might well be temporarily soothing but ultimately it turns destructive. In the disaster that fell upon Western Europe in the 14th century, known as the Bubonic Plague, between 20-35% of the adult population of Europe died. What caused the wrath of God to fall so heavily upon their world, they wondered? The first answer was that their own sinfulness was responsible, so a movement known as the “Flagellants” developed in which thousands of men marched through the streets of European cities lashing their own bare backs with whips. Their hope was that if they punished themselves sufficiently, God would withdraw the punishing ‘black death.’ The second answer they heard was that God was angry because Europe’s Christians had tolerated infidels. Responding to that premise they proceeded to persecute Jews in a frenzy of killing anti-Semitism. When unexplained mysteries baffled the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 17th century, they responded by executing women they deemed to be the agents of Satan, who, they concluded, had caused their distress.

Why do we find this capricious God comforting? Do we really want a Deity we can manipulate with the flattery of regular worship and from whom we can win brownie points with good behavior? Do human beings really desire a God who is so unstable that the divine mind will change to accommodate fervent prayers? What is the value we find in a God who keeps us in a state of perpetual dependency? Why can we not let this pathetic God die? Is it that we are not able yet to accept responsibility for our role in the determination of the destiny of this planet?

Ironically enough, there does appear to be a far deeper connection between human behavior and natural disaster than our popular rhetoric imagines. Some natural disasters, like the collision of tectonic plates that create Tsunami waves are just that, natural disasters. They are not a response to anyone’s behavior. Other disasters, however, are connected with our behavior but not in the old moralistic sense. We are, for example, experiencing today changing weather patterns that reflect impending environmental disasters. They result not from an angry deity but from such things as irresponsible human breeding habits that have led to overpopulation and the resulting exhaustion of many of the earth’s resources. We have cut down the rain forests, polluted the air we breathe and the water we drink. Our behavior has led to global warming, acid rain, the melting of the polar icecaps and the resulting dramatic changes in the weather patterns of our world. These present and pending disasters are nature’s way of saying that our rape of mother earth has dire consequences. They are the result of a humanity that has not yet embraced the fact that the world is not an enemy that we must conquer and subdue as if we are not a part of it. They are the result of our conceptualizing God as separated from this world, isolated in the sky, then endowing this God with symbols of parenthood that allow us to remain irresponsible children who cannot see beyond the level of our own self-centered need for comfort and security.

Let me say boldly what religious leaders are loathe to say. There is no God in the sky who will send out a divine vacuum to gobble up the human waste that now warms our atmosphere. There is no heavenly filtering system through which we can recycle the water of our river, lakes and oceans. In today’s world there is no scapegoat other than ourselves upon whom we can heap the blame for our rapid environmental degradation. That is why the number and intensity of hurricanes seems to rise every year. That is why the American Midwest has seen a tenfold increase in the number of tornadoes in the last fifty years. That is why killing heat waves have become regular features of both Europe’s climate and ours. These things are not the result of a wrathful God punishing us for some supposed misdeeds; they are the direct result of human beings continuing to act with childlike irresponsibility because we have not yet embraced the idea that there is no supernatural God in the sky who will protect us even from ourselves.

Has not the time come for our understanding of God to mature, to embrace reality? Our ‘heavenly parent’ definition of God acts to relieve us of responsibility. Our great religious fear is that if God is not this Supernatural Being in the sky, then there is no God. Atheism is, we think, the only alternative to theism. That is the boundary over which religious people fear to walk.

Suppose, however, that God is defined as the Source of Life, so that our worship demands that we cooperate with all of nature rather than trying to conquer it for our own benefit. Suppose God is defined as the Source of Love, so that our worship enables us to journey beyond the limits of our fear to embrace all that is. Suppose God is defined as the Ground of Being so that our worship relates us to a holiness that permeates all that is. That is what we need to understand before we human beings can grow up and accept responsibility for our world.

The next time you see or hear a Governor or any other person act as if God is responsible for the weather, sickness, or our victories and defeats, recognize it for what it is: the juvenile whimpering of an immature human being who above all else needs to mature spiritually.

~  John Shelby Spong