Democrats have spent months selling Adam Hamilton as the reasonable pastor who can win over Kansas Republicans.
Now voters are being reminded what his pulpit sounded like when the country was on fire.
In a June 2020 sermon delivered days after George Floyd’s death, Hamilton urged his congregation to recognize and repent for “white privilege.” He described advantages he believed came from being educated, white, and male, and framed that recognition as a Christian obligation.
The sermon is not a rumor or an anonymous allegation. Hamilton delivered it publicly, gave it the title “Jesus, Protests and Repentance,” and posted it through his church.
Fox News reviewed the sermon and reports that Hamilton told congregants he had been blind to parts of American society and had benefited from circumstances tied to his race, sex, and education. He contrasted his own experience with the fear some black Americans describe during encounters with police.
Christians can disagree in good faith about race, policing, repentance, and the church’s role in politics. But the language of collective racial privilege carries a political framework that assigns moral significance to group identity before individual conduct.
That is exactly why the sermon matters now.
Hamilton is no longer speaking only to a congregation. He is the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in a race that could determine control of the chamber.
His campaign argues that the sermon was about Christian self-examination and reconciliation, not contempt for white Kansans. It accuses Republican Senator Roger Marshall of using division to distract from his own record.
Voters should hear that defense. They should also hear Hamilton’s own words and decide whether the underlying worldview belongs in their Senate seat.
Former pastor Adam Hamilton, the Democrat candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas against Republican Roger Marshall, once suggested that congregants should repent for their “white” privilege during a sermon he gave during the George Floyd protests.
I think…
— David Burke(@ConservativeTht) October 15, 2026
The political danger for Republicans is that Hamilton has built his campaign around a different image. He calls himself an independent-minded Democrat, emphasizes his decades leading the Church of the Resurrection, and points to endorsements from former Republican governors Bill Graves and Mike Hayden.
That strategy has worked well enough to turn what should have been a safe Republican seat into a national emergency.
The Cook Political Report now rates the Kansas Senate race a toss-up. The forecaster says Marshall has been pushed onto defense over his former medical practice’s billing and collection record while Hamilton has grown increasingly competitive in a state that normally sends Republicans to Washington.
Kansas last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. Nearly a century of history is now colliding with a volatile national environment, an incumbent carrying real baggage, and a challenger with statewide name recognition from leading one of the country’s largest Methodist churches.
The rating matters beyond Kansas because Democrats need four Republican-held seats to take control of the chamber. A seat the GOP once expected to protect cheaply is now consuming money, attention, and campaign talent that could have gone to other battlegrounds.
Axios Kansas City reports that the two major-party candidates are each around 46 percent in a RealClearPolitics polling average through October 10. Libertarian David Graham could draw enough support to matter in a race that close.
The outlet notes that Hamilton is running as an independent-minded Democrat and has support from two former Republican governors. Marshall is a former obstetrician and two-term House member with President Trump’s endorsement, while Graham is an Overland Park attorney making another statewide run.
President Trump carried Kansas by roughly 16 points in 2024. A tied Senate contest there is a Republican warning siren.
Marshall has Trump’s endorsement, but the incumbent has taken sustained hits over his former medical practice, campaign performance, and the economic pressure facing Kansas farmers. Republican outside groups have poured millions into the state while Democrats increasingly treat Hamilton as a genuine pickup opportunity.
The Associated Press reported last month that national Republican groups were already portraying Hamilton as far more liberal than his moderate campaign image, even as he leaned on his pastoral career and support from prominent former Republicans. His prior sermons on race and climate became central evidence in that argument, while his campaign denied separate claims about church support for a children’s drag event and accused the GOP of distorting his record.
Republicans need discipline here. Calling Hamilton names will not close the sale.
The stronger case is to place his public record beside his current campaign branding and let voters see the distance.
Hamilton wants credit for sounding less abrasive than national Democrats. Fine.
Civility does not make an idea moderate.
A pastor can speak softly while advancing a worldview built around racial privilege, collective guilt, climate penance, and progressive social policy. Tone and substance are not the same thing.
Adam Hamilton, a former pastor & candidate running to make history in deep-red Kansas, once suggested that people should repent for their White privilege as violent protests against the death of George Floyd by BLM rippled through the countrypic.twitter.com/PAjekOzsby
— Giordano Bruno (@GioBruno1600) October 15, 2026
Hamilton’s supporters will say people can evolve and that a six-year-old sermon should not decide a 2026 election. That is a fair argument only if Hamilton explains what, if anything, he now rejects.
Does he still believe white congregants should repent for privileges attached to their race? Does he still see racial identity as a useful starting point for public policy?
Would that framework shape his votes on policing, education, civil rights, or federal hiring?
Those are legitimate questions for a candidate asking Kansans to hand Democrats a Senate seat they have not held in 94 years.
Republicans also need to understand the stakes. They cannot assume Kansas will return automatically to its usual partisan shape.
Hamilton is polished, well known, well funded, and running against an incumbent with real vulnerabilities.
Marshall must make the contrast without becoming careless or complacent: individual liberty versus group guilt, equal treatment versus identity politics, and accountable representation versus a Democratic majority led from Washington.
The resurfaced sermon does not end the Kansas race.
It does strip away some of the packaging.
Now Kansas voters get to decide whether Adam Hamilton’s old pulpit and his new campaign are telling the same story.
The post Kansas Democrat’s ‘White Privilege’ Sermon Resurfaces in Senate Race Republicans Can’t Afford to Lose appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
Continue reading...
[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
