Kansas Dem nominee and megachurch pastor urged White privilege repentance after Floyd

Kansas Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton urged his megachurch to repent for White privilege after George Floyd, a message Republicans say is way too woke for the state.

Fox News Digital reported that Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton, the longtime senior pastor at the Church of the Resurrection, told his congregation in a June 2020 sermon to recognize White privilege and repent in the days after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.

Hamilton is now running against Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., in a midterm contest that the Cook Political Report has rated a toss-up. National Republicans have begun dumping more resources into the race. An outside group has already cast the pastor’s old remarks as proof he is out of step with Kansas voters.

The sermon, titled “Jesus, Protests and Repentance,” came as Black Lives Matter protests dominated national attention. Hamilton pushed back against rioting and looting. He also said “all lives matter.” Then he turned to privilege, police stops, and a call for personal conversion.

Hamilton told his flock he had benefits as an educated White male

In the sermon later posted on the church’s YouTube page, Hamilton described growing up blind to parts of American society.

He told the congregation:

"Like part of what I know is that, is that I grew up in a way that I'm blind to certain things in our society,"

He continued:

"I just am. And I have certain benefits by virtue of being educated, White and male, right? And we don't like to hear that, especially White folks don't like to hear that. But there are benefits that come along with that,"

Hamilton said he is never afraid a police officer will pull a gun when he is stopped. He said every African American man he knows worries about what might happen in the same situation. Hands go to the steering wheel at 10 and 2, he said, because that is what they were taught as children. He was not taught that fear.

"There are benefits and privileges to my place in life. I have to recognize that," he said. "Before I can do anything to help anyone else, I have to have a conversion. I have to repent."

That language is now campaign material in a deep-red state that has gone nearly a century without sending a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

Massachusetts group brands the pastor "way too woke for Kansas"

Shortly after Hamilton won his primary, the Main Street Fund, an outside group based in Massachusetts, ran an ad in Kansas splicing portions of two different sermons. The ad charged that Hamilton was "way too woke for Kansas," The Kansas City Star reported as cited in the Fox News account.

Fox News also noted Hamilton has argued that cattle production adds to greenhouse gases. Kansas is the nation’s third-largest beef producer. In a farm-and-ranch state, climate lectures about cattle land differently than they do on the coasts.

Democratic campaigns elsewhere have faced their own headaches this cycle, from fundraising integrity fights to progressive primary shocks that leave moderate voters cold.

Hamilton’s campaign did not run from the old tape. It went after Marshall instead.

Campaign spokesman says Marshall is changing the subject

Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for Hamilton’s campaign, told Fox News Digital that Marshall wants to talk about anything other than his own record. Brody accused the senator of “suing and jailing mothers” and of “protecting predators by voting against releasing the Epstein Files.” Those are campaign allegations, not findings established in the reporting.

Brody added:

"Once again, he’s attacking Adam for something Roger said himself. Roger’s own pastor called Adam ‘middle of the road.’ 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 at 18% interest."

The counterpunch tries to reframe a cultural fight as a kitchen-table fight. Marshall’s side has treated the 2020 sermon as evidence of a worldview Kansas does not share.

Party tension is not unique to Kansas. Progressive surges in Democratic primaries have already rattled the party’s old guard in other states this cycle.

Marshall condemned Floyd’s death and called for bipartisan reform

Six years ago, Marshall struck a somber tone of his own. Then running for his first Senate term, he condemned Floyd’s killing and pushed for reforms. He also pointed to Federal Protective Services Officer Patrick Underwood, killed in a drive-by shooting just days after Floyd’s death.

After a House Judiciary hearing on police practices and law enforcement accountability, Marshall wrote on Facebook that Republicans had called on congressional Democrats to work across the aisle “to make sure that what happened to George Floyd and Patrick Underwood never happens again, and significant bipartisan reform can be passed.”

That record matters because it undercuts any claim that only one side spoke after 2020. Marshall talked about the deaths and about legislation. Hamilton talked about privilege, indifference, and repentance inside his church.

Voters can weigh which message fits a state that still sends cattle to market and still expects its senators to keep order at the border. Marshall has largely aligned with President Donald Trump and rarely broken from the administration. Last month he called for more advance notice and cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security and Kansas officials after federal immigration agents moved through the southern part of the state.

Accountability questions keep hitting Democratic candidates in red and purple terrain alike, including workplace and immigration controversies that force uncomfortable answers on the trail.

Toss-up rating pulls national money into a long-red seat

Cook’s toss-up rating changed the map math. A seat Kansas has treated as safely Republican now draws outside spending and sharper cultural contrasts. Marshall’s campaign has painted Hamilton as a woke megachurch pastor. Hamilton’s team answers with prices, medical bills, and a plea not to “divide us by race.”

The pastor’s own words remain the simplest evidence. He said White Americans enjoy benefits they do not like to hear named. He said he needed a conversion before he could help anyone else. He said he had to repent.

In Leawood and across the state, those lines now sit beside a Senate ballot. Church of the Resurrection built a large following on Hamilton’s teaching. Translating that pulpit language into a statewide pitch is a different test, especially when a Massachusetts fund is airing the tape and beef country is listening.

Other states have already watched Democratic primary voters reject the furthest-left options, as when Wisconsin business leaders saw a socialist beaten in a primary and exhaled. Kansas Republicans are betting the 2020 sermon does similar work without any new primary required.

Hamilton won his primary and forced a real race. Marshall still holds the office, the Trump alignment, and the argument that sermons on White guilt are not a governing agenda. Midterm pressure has even produced odd-bedfellow moments nationally, including when Trump invited Pennsylvania’s Fetterman toward the GOP as Democrats strained to hold their coalition.

Kansas will decide whether a megachurch pastor’s call to repent for privilege is moral leadership or a category error on a Senate ballot. Gas, groceries, cattle, and border enforcement do not run on confession. They run on results.