A former pastor and candidate running to make history in deep-red Kansas once suggested that people should repent for their White privilege as protests against the death of George Floyd rippled through the country.
During the tumultuous summer of 2020, just days after Floyd’s killing in Minnesota, Adam Hamilton called on his congregation at the Church of the Resurrection to recognize their White privilege and repent.
“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,” Hamilton said during a sermon dubbed “Jesus, Protests and Repentance.” “I just am. And I have certain benefits by virtue of being educated, White and male, right?”
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“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,” he continued.
Hamilton is running against Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., in what has become one of the tightest races of this midterm cycle, despite Kansas’ near-century-long history of not sending a Democratic candidate to the Senate.
“Roger Marshall wants to talk about anything other than his history of suing and jailing mothers and protecting predators by voting against releasing the Epstein Files,” Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for Hamilton’s campaign, told Fox News Digital. “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.”
Republicans acknowledge that they are facing headwinds going into November’s election, but until recently, the contest between Marshall and Hamilton wasn’t of much concern for the GOP.
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Now, the race has taken a turn and been rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report as voters fume over the cost of fuel, groceries and other economic pain. In response, national Republicans are beginning to dump more resources into the contest to ensure that they maintain the seat.
Throughout the race, Marshall has largely aligned himself with President Donald Trump, only rarely breaking from the administration on certain decisions — last month he called for more advance notice and cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Kansas government after federal immigration agents descended on the southern part of the state.
Marshall has painted Hamilton as a “woke” megachurch pastor, delivering left-leaning ideals from the pulpit.
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So has an outside group based in Massachusetts, the Main Street Fund, which ran an ad in Kansas that spliced portions of two different sermons and charged that Hamilton was “way too woke for Kansas,” shortly after Hamilton won his primary, The Kansas City Star reported.
During the sermon from June 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, Hamilton pushed back against rioting and looting, and argued that while the BLM movement was the focal point at the time, all lives matters.
“Of course all lives matter,” Hamilton said. “Everybody understands white lives matter, blue lives matter.”
Hamilton continued in his sermon posted on the church’s YouTube page in June 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter protests, “When I’m stopped by the police, I’m never afraid that they’re gonna pull a gun on me.”
“But every African American man that I know is worried about what might happen when a police pull him over,” Hamilton said at the time. “It’s not that all the police are bad, they’re gonna do something like that, but there’s this fear underneath there. And so the hands go on the steering wheel at 10 and 2. They’ve been taught that from the time they were children. Right?”
“I wasn’t taught that, because I don’t have to be afraid of that. Right? And there’s a whole host of other things that are just a part of life. You know, I can … well, you get the idea. There are benefits and privileges to my place in life. I have to recognize that,” he continued. “To see that. And then I have to listen. I have to listen and understand, and finally be able to see the brokenness in myself, and my indifference. Before I can do anything to help anyone else, I have to have a conversion. I have to repent.”
And Marshall, who was running for his first term in the Senate at the time, struck a similar somber tone as Hamilton six years ago.
In various posts to social media and interviews with local outlets, Marshall condemned Floyd’s slaying and pushed for reforms that would ensure what happened in Minnesota and to federal Protective Services Officer Patrick Underwood, who was killed in a drive-by shooting just days after Floyd’s death.
“Additionally, Republicans 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,” Marshall said on Facebook following a House Judiciary hearing on police practices and law enforcement accountability.