Woke megachurch pastor, Dem nominee called on congregation to repent for driving, eating beef

Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee challenging Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., for Senate, spent years leading the nation's largest United Methodist church before entering politics, and a sermon from that pulpit is now drawing fire from Marshall's campaign. In a January 2020 message titled "What would Jesus say about climate change?" at the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Hamilton urged his congregation to repent for their carbon footprints, saying he had been wasteful and had not been a good steward of the earth. He told worshippers that repentance meant seeing things differently, having it "changed my heart, and it changed my behavior," and called on them to acknowledge that their habits affect future generations and to commit to acting differently, according to Fox News.

Marshall's campaign seized on the sermon given Kansas's standing as the nation's third-largest beef producer, with Marshall arguing that Hamilton telling Kansans to repent for eating beef, paired with shifting positions on the Farm Bill, shows he would govern like any other liberal Democrat in the Senate.

The attack comes as a Senate seat Republicans have held for 94 years has become more competitive; Kansas moved from "Likely R" to "Lean R" in Fox News's Power Rankings, a shift also reflected by the Cook Political Report. Rising fuel costs, particularly diesel prices in the agriculture-heavy state tied to President Donald Trump's Iran war, are adding to voter unease and widening the map of Senate seats Republicans must defend.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →