Megachurch Pastor Wakes Up as Democratic Nominee Calls for Repentance of White Privilege After George Floyd, BLM

Adam Hamilton once urged his megachurch to repent for white privilege after the death of George Floyd, as he now challenges Senator Roger Marshall in Kansas.

The megachurch pastor, the Democratic candidate, argued that cattle production adds to greenhouse gases

Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kansas — the nation's third-largest beef producer — told his crowd that cows are contributing to climate change. (Credit: YouTube/Church of the Resurrection, January 27, 2020)

As protests against the death of George Floyd rage across the country, a former pastor and candidate running for history in deep red Kansas once suggested that people should repent for their white privilege.

During the tumultuous summer of 2020, just days after Floyd's murder in Minnesota, Adam Hamilton called on his congregation at the Church of the Resurrection to acknowledge their white privilege and repent.

"Like part of what I know is that I was raised to be blind to certain things in my society," Hamilton said during a sermon titled "Jesus, Protests and Repentance." "I just am. And I have certain advantages because I'm educated, white and male, right?"

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"And we don't like to hear that, especially white people don't like to hear that. But there are benefits that come with it," he continued.

Hamilton is running against Sen. Roger Marshall in what has become one of the tightest races of the midterms, despite Kansas' nearly century-long history of not sending a Democratic candidate to the Senate.

Republicans acknowledge that they face headwinds in the November election, but until recently, the race between Marshall and Hamilton was not much of a concern for the GOP.

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Now, the race has taken a turn and is ranked by the Cook Political Report as voters are angry about the cost of fuel, food and other economic woes. In response, national Republicans have begun pouring more resources into the race to ensure they retain their seats.

During the race, Marshall largely aligned himself with President Donald Trump and rarely left the administration on specific decisions — last month he called for more information and cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the state of Kansas after federal immigration agents entered the southern part of the state.

Marshall has painted Hamilton as a "woke" megachurch pastor who preaches leftist ideals from the pulpit.

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Shortly after Hamilton won his primary, the Kansas City Star reported on Main Street Fund, a Massachusetts-based outside group that aired an ad in Kansas that spliced together parts of two different sermons and claimed that Hamilton was "too wide awake for Kansas."

During a sermon from June 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, Hamilton pushed back against rioting and looting, arguing that while the BLM movement was the focal point at the time, all lives mattered.

"Of course all lives matter," Hamilton said. "Everybody knows white lives matter, blue lives matter."

In his June 2020 sermon posted on the church's YouTube page amid the Black Lives Matter protests, Hamilton continued, "When I get stopped by the police, I'm never afraid they're going to pull a gun on me."

"But every African American man I know is worried about what's going to happen when the police kill him," Hamilton said at the time. "It's not that all cops are bad, they want to do that, but there's this fear underneath. So hands on the wheel go at 10 and 2. They've been taught that since they were kids. Right?"

He continued, "I wasn't taught that because I don't have to be afraid of it. Right? And there's a whole lot of other things that are just part of life. You know, I can ... well, you get the idea. There are advantages and privileges to my place in life. I have to recognize that." "To see it. And then I must listen. I must listen and understand, and finally be able to see the brokenness in myself and my indifference. Before I can do anything to help another, I must be converted. I must repent."

And Marshall, then running for his first term in the Senate, struck a similar dark tone to Hamilton's six years earlier.

In various social media posts and interviews with local media, Marshall condemned Floyd's killing and pushed for reforms that would ensure the events of Minnesota and Federal Protective Services officer Patrick Underwood, who was killed in a drive-by shooting just days after Floyd's death.

"Furthermore, Republicans have called on Democrats in Congress to work across the aisle to make sure what happened to George Floyd and Patrick Underwood never happens again and that important bipartisan reforms are possible," Marshall said on Facebook after a House Judiciary hearing on police actions and law enforcement accountability.

This sparsely populated red state has quietly climbed to the top of America's financial rankings.