Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton tests whether faith and moderation can crack Republicans’ century-long Kansas Senate hold
EMPORIA, Kansas — Adam Hamilton spent more than three decades building one of America's largest Methodist congregations by preaching to people whose politics often differed sharply from one another. Now the 61-year-old megachurch pastor is attempting something Kansas Democrats have failed to accomplish since the Great Depression: win a U.S. Senate election. Hamilton, the Democratic nominee challenging Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in November, is betting that his religious profile, centrist message and emphasis on affordability and political decency can persuade enough moderate Republicans and independents to break a GOP Senate winning streak stretching back to 1932.
The odds remain firmly against him. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years, and Democrats have not come within 10 percentage points of winning one of the state's Senate races in more than half a century. Marshall defeated Democrat Barbara Bollier by about 11 points in 2020, and the Cook Political Report currently rates the 2026 contest Solid Republican. Marshall, a physician, former House member and fifth-generation Kansas farm kid, is campaigning heavily among rural conservatives and warning voters that electing Hamilton could help Democrats take control of the Senate.
Yet Kansas is more politically complicated than its Senate record suggests. The state has repeatedly elected Democratic governors, including Kathleen Sebelius and Laura Kelly, and Kansas voters decisively rejected a 2022 constitutional amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to restrict abortion rights more aggressively. That history demonstrates the existence of a substantial moderate electorate willing to cross party lines. The unresolved question is why that crossover has repeatedly occurred in gubernatorial elections but disappeared when Kansans choose senators.
Hamilton's candidacy is essentially an experiment designed around that distinction. He describes himself as a centrist focused on “bringing people together” and says his own congregation is divided almost evenly among Democrats, Republicans and independents. He founded the Church of the Resurrection in 1990 with only a handful of worshippers meeting in a funeral-home chapel; it has since grown to roughly 25,000 members across nine Kansas City-area locations, making it the nation's largest United Methodist congregation. Hamilton has also written more than 30 books, giving him a national profile unusual for a first-time political candidate.
Republicans are attempting to turn precisely that extensive religious record into a political vulnerability. Marshall has branded Hamilton “too woke for Kansas,” while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz attacked a 2022 Hamilton sermon discussing whether non-Christians could receive salvation after death, accusing him of rejecting central Christian teachings. Marshall amplified the criticism, arguing that the sermon was one of many examples demonstrating that Hamilton's theology and politics are outside Kansas' mainstream. Hamilton counters that Christian traditions contain differing interpretations and says that if Jesus appeared today, Marshall would probably call him “woke.”
Other conservative attacks have targeted Hamilton's positions on climate change and LGBTQ+ inclusion. Political advertising has claimed he urged Christians to repent for eating beef, but AP found the accusation relied on two portions of a 2020 sermon stitched together misleadingly: Hamilton separately discussed Christian responsibility for protecting creation and suggested dietary changes as one possible way individuals could reduce emissions. His church supports LGBTQ+ inclusion and participates in Pride events, while Hamilton backed allowing LGBTQ+ clergy within the United Methodist Church after saying his views evolved through relationships with gay and lesbian members of his congregation.
Hamilton simultaneously faces a different concern from some voters on the left: whether an active religious leader should wield governmental power. He says he has no intention of using a Senate seat to evangelize and would defend constituents regardless of whether they practice any religion. If elected, however, he plans to remain senior pastor of Church of the Resurrection and preach approximately 12 to 18 times each year. That would place him in exceptionally rare company: among senators over the past century, Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock is the only current example of a senator simultaneously maintaining active leadership of a congregation.
Hamilton is consequently trying to convert religious identity from a culture-war liability into an economic argument. He emphasizes affordability, Medicaid, food assistance and rural health care, asking audiences when caring for one's neighbor became “woke.” He has also attacked Marshall over tariffs and the Iran war, arguing that both are imposing economic costs on Kansas households and agricultural communities. The strategy is deliberately different from presenting himself primarily as a progressive alternative to a Republican incumbent: Hamilton wants voters to see his policy positions as an extension of a faith-based obligation toward families and communities.
Marshall's counterstrategy rests on geography and party identification. He emphasizes his agricultural background and has mocked suburban-based Hamilton as someone who “doesn't know a heifer from a steer,” an effort to sharpen the divide between the Kansas City suburbs where Democrats have made gains and the vast rural areas that continue to deliver overwhelming Republican margins. For Hamilton to win, improving Democratic turnout would almost certainly be insufficient; he would need to reduce Marshall's rural advantage while winning suburban moderates and independents by unusually large margins.
There are signs that national conditions have at least forced Republicans to pay attention to places they would normally consider secure. Democrats are contesting traditionally Republican Senate territory in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Mississippi and Nebraska, expanding the map Republicans may have to defend. But Kansas remains fundamentally different from a true toss-up: Hamilton's profile may make the contest more expensive and competitive without erasing the state's longstanding Republican advantage.
That is what makes Kansas worth watching even if Marshall remains favored. Hamilton does not necessarily need to transform Kansas into a Democratic state to demonstrate a political shift. He needs to prove that a Democrat can reconstruct the coalition that already exists in Kansas gubernatorial politics — Democrats plus independents plus a meaningful share of moderate Republicans — and transfer it to a federal race.
For nearly a century, Kansas voters have demonstrated that they can vote Democratic. They simply haven't done it for the U.S. Senate. Hamilton's campaign will test whether a pastor accustomed to keeping Republicans and Democrats inside the same church can persuade enough of them to enter the same voting coalition.