Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton said Jesus would have backed DEI. Is he too woke for Kansas?

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Washington Secrets. If a friend sent you this and you’d like to sign up, CLICK HERE. Secrets is on the road. We just arrived in Kansas to bring you up to date with everything happening here, and to see if there is really any chance that Democrats could flip it blue. Spoiler alert: It’s game on.COFFEYVILLE, Kansas — Pastor Adam Hamilton probably did not think there was anything controversial about his sermon titled, “What would Jesus say about diversity and inclusion?”He riffs on the idea of “Johnson County beige,” implying this corner of Kansas is too white, linking the county’s drab architectural design choices with a lack of diversity in its population. Then he encourages his corner of Kansas to adopt a DEI stance to help young people stay.“We’ve all heard this term before, Johnson County beige. The sameness of everything. We want diversity,” he says in a video of the 2020 sermon, saying the city of Overland Park has to make itself attractive to diverse groups of people.“We’ve got to do something to be attractive to diverse groups of people, or else we don’t have a future as a city because people don’t want to live in a place where everything’s the same.”That was then. Today, that pastor is the Democratic candidate in a tight contest to unseat Roger Marshall as U.S. senator for Kansas.The state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, but a recent poll suggested Hamilton has a narrow lead.Now his past comments are coming back to haunt him.“Adam Hamilton thinks the problem with Johnson County, Kansas, is the people who live there — that’s a strange pitch for a guy depending on those same people for their vote,” said a political strategist in the state, who asked to speak on condition of anonymity so as not to affect business relationships.Like James Talarico in Texas, Democrats in Kansas have high hopes that a candidate who talks openly about his faith is the sort of candidate that can flip a red state blue.And Hamilton is not just any old Christian. He is the founder of a megachurch. His United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, in Johnson County, claims a membership of 24,000. Which means there are hours and hours of sermons on YouTube for Republicans to trawl for viral clips and attack ads.The latest to come under scrutiny is that 2020 sermon on diversity.“There are large numbers of Gen Z, our children or grandchildren, who are going to say, ‘I don’t want to live in Johnson County because I want to live around people who are like me. I want to live around people who are different from me,” he says. “I want to live around people who, who, you know, who can encourage and strengthen and challenge me in places.’”His words are being picked over for any sign that he is “too woke and too weak” for Kansas. Democratic U.S. senatorial candidate Adam Hamilton of Kansas, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Olathe. Kan. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley, File) This week, Fox News highlighted Hamilton’s 2020 sermon titled, “What Would Jesus Say About Climate Change?” Listeners were urged to repent for their impact on climate change, such as the production of methane from beef farming.“I’m calling us to repentance to say, ‘I realize that this has impact, even if it seems small, it has an impact on the world and future generations. And I feel badly about that, and I’m going to do something different from this time forward,’” he said.The message lands differently six years later, when he is locked in a Senate race in a state that accounts for almost one-quarter of total U.S. beef production.Or there was a 2018 passage resurfaced by a Republican strategist earlier this month in which he compared violence committed by Muslims or by Christians.“How many Islamic terrorist acts have been committed in Kansas City?” asks Hamilton. “I can’t think of any, but I can think of several people who were killed in the name of religion by people who were either Christians or who were somehow shaped by Christianity.”Republicans say the sermons reveal the real Hamilton.Brent Robertson, chief of staff to Hamilton’s opponent Marshall, said: “This is yet another example of what Democrat Adam Hamilton really believes — his “moderate” schtick is rapidly losing its shine as more and more of these crazy sermons become public.”Tyson Brody, Hamilton’s campaign spokesman, said Marshall wanted to talk about anything other than headlines about how he sued patients during his decadeslong career as an obstetrician-gynecologist.“Once again, he’s attacking Adam for something Roger said himself. Roger’s own pastor called Adam ‘middle of the road,” Brody said.“Kansans are tired of high gas and grocery prices and ready for a Senator who won’t divide us by race, religion, income, or ability to pay a medical bill.”You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly, who you can reach at [email protected] with your comments, story tips, and suggestions.The gospel, according to James Talarico (sort of) While we are on the subject of Democratic candidates and religion, Secrets has downloaded the Bible used at the church attended by James Talarico’s church in Austin. (And when I say “Talarico’s church”, I don’t mean in the sense of Hamilton, who founded and runs his own, but in the regular sense of the one he attends.)St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church has become something of a source of awkwardness for the Democratic candidate. Teaching elders there can’t seem to help getting caught on a hidden camera saying silly things.And a glance at the Inclusive Bible (subtitled “The first egalitarian translation”), which they hand out to new members, contains all sorts of gems.The starting point for this edition is to think about how language around God affects the way Christians treat other people, according to the authors.“This process begins with looking through the standard translations of scripture for sexist and classist forms and attitudes,” it explains helpfully.So “Father” is out apparently when it comes to God, replaced by the original, untranslated Aramaic word Abba, which, although it refers to a male parent, doesn’t apparently present centuries of automatic gender imagery to an English speaker’s ear.And Jesus cannot be the Son of God, bringing with it its own gender hierarchy. Instead, he becomes “Only Begotten,” “God’s Own,” and “Eternally Begotten” instead.“Kingdom” becomes “kindom” to avoid problems of class, just as “Lord” becomes “Most High,” “Most High God,” “Almighty,” and “Sovereign One” to avoid what it sees as sexist and classist language.At times, the Holy Spirit becomes a She. When couples are mentioned, the wife’s name comes first.But perhaps the best moment comes with the Parable of the Ten Virgins in the Gospel According to Mark. It becomes the Parable of the Ten Attendants, who, rather than meeting the groom, meet the gender-fudged “bridal party.”But before you all leap to your anti-Talarico conclusions, let’s just be fair. He has said he uses his father’s copy of the Revised Standard Version, a pretty mainstream translation, at home.But how else to explain his famous comment that “God is nonbinary?”READ MORE: WHICH BIBLE DOES TALARICO BELIEVE?Lunchtime reading Mighty Sparrow, singer, songwriter and guitarist who took calypso around the world: Only Lord Kitchener came close to his global reach. One of the greats.When gender deception is a crime: In The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial, a new book about the 2015 trial and 2017 retrial of Gayle Newland, the British writer and editor Izabella Scott goes to some lengths to avoid calling either Gayle or her ex-best friend “mental.”