Megachurch pastor’s Senate tease sparks ethics complaint from Kansas Republicans

Adam Hamilton hasn’t officially declared his candidacy, but the GOP claims his church is already breaking campaign finance rules

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The Kansas Republican Party is accusing a Christian pastor of unfairly using his megachurch platform to promote a political candidate.

That sound you hear is your irony meter breaking. But their justification is worth exploring, and so is the way this pastor’s church is handling a delicate situation.

Two months ago, Adam Hamilton announced that he was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate from Kansas. He needed time to go around the state, talk to voters and potential donors, and figure out if he would be a viable candidate before making it official.

The reason he thought he might even have a shot here is because he’s already a leader of sorts, having founded the United Methodist-affiliated Church of the Resurrection over three decades ago. It’s now the largest UMC congregation in the country and one of the largest in the world, with over 24,000 active members spread out over nine locations.

What makes Hamilton unique is that he’s hardly a fundamentalist preacher. He has admitted there are “hundreds” of mistakes in the Bible (though he believes in the overall arc of the story). He has said it’s wrong for churches to prohibit women from being ordained as preachers. He supports social justice. And he’s been a supporter of the United Methodist Church’s inclusive position on openly gay clergy members and its decision to allow clergy members to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.

In short, his whole thing is trying to bring people together in a divided world and he believes that might be a winning formula for a Senate race. Maybe he’s right. Even if he’s not a progressive firebrand, he would undoubtedly be better than a typical Republican.

It helps to understand the current political landscape in the state. The seat we’re talking about is currently held by Republican Roger Marshall, a conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist who’s running for a second term. It’s considered by the Cook Political Report to be a “solid” GOP seat, meaning there’s virtually no chance a Republican will lose… at least under current circumstances. Democrats will have a candidate, but given that a Republican won the other Senate seat in 2022 by over a 20-point margin, and Marshall won his 2020 race by 11 points (in a year when the anti-Trump voters were out in full force), you have to assume any opponent with a D next to their name will be an afterthought.

One strategy to counter that, however, is to imitate what’s happening in neighboring (and deeply red) Nebraska. The Democrats there have already announced they won’t even put up an official candidate but instead support the independent Dan Osborn, who came very close to winning a Senate seat two years ago.

So if Hamilton wants to get elected in Kansas, his best chance may be running as an independent, not as a Democrat. (That’s assuming Democrats won’t put up a fight if he decides to run.)

Here’s where things get messy.

Hamilton announced his thinking—that he was exploring the possibility of a run—via a video posted on his church’s website and released on the church’s YouTube channel:

He said in that video that he wanted to personally tell his congregation where his mind was at so they didn’t hear about it in newspapers. He also told them, “I'm not asking you to vote for me. I'm not asking you to support me. I'm just asking, would you please pray for me for God's wisdom?” More than anything, he wanted to give them a heads up that, if he ran, he would probably stop preaching in the immediate future so he could concentrate on the race, and if he won, church leaders could begin the process for finding his replacement, something they already had on their radar since Hamilton was planning to retire in a couple of years.

… If I lose, I’ve already got a sermon series planned. It’s called “The thrill of victor and the agony of defeat.”

But what if I win? Well, if I win, starting in January of 2027, would I remain your senior pastor?… If the staff parish committee would have me, the answer is yes. I would continue to be your senior pastor, but I would be scaling back the time that I would be able to commit to the church to about one quarter time, and I would be preaching 12 to 18 times a year.

(It’s not unusual for pastors in elected office to preach when their schedules allow. Sen. Raphael Warnock does it regularly.)

Hamilton said he would make his decision after Easter, but as of this writing, he hasn’t made anything official.

In the meantime, though, the church has put up a page on its website dedicated to his decision. They make clear that the church would not endorse him if he ran because the church “does not endorse political candidates or parties.” (They have a policy to that effect.)

Congregants and staff members are encouraged to vote according to their own convictions. To maintain clear distinctions between church life and any political activity, the church will not engage in political activities this year. For instance, we will not host onsite voter registration, distribute voter guides, or hold candidate forums during this election cycle. The church’s focus remains on our shared faith and mission.

They also say no church resources would be used for the campaign. Staffers wouldn’t work on the campaign “during work hours,” the church’s database would not be shared with the campaign, etc.

To state the obvious, this is a hell of a lot of commentary from the church to describe a pastor who’s not going to run for Senate. But they’re also trying to give their massive congregation details about what could be a major internal shakeup. Pastors like Hamilton, who have been around for decades, don’t usually leave suddenly for reasons other than a major scandal. This isn’t anything like that.

Whatever the case, it sure looks like the Kansas Republican Party assumes he’s going to run, because they recently filed an ethics complaint with the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance laws. They’re basically trying to hamper his potential campaign before it ever gets off the ground.

In their announcement, the Party said Hamilton and his church were already violating the law by using church resources to promote his exploratory committee.

Those actions, the complaint argues, constitute prohibited in-kind corporate contributions to a federal candidate.

“The Kansas Republican Party believes strongly in the rule of law. This complaint raises serious questions about the separation between the Church of the Resurrection’s religious mission and partisan political activity,” Rob Fillion, Executive Director of the Kansas Republican Party, said. “This is a clear and blatant violation of federal law. For more than a century, corporations, including nonprofit corporations like churches, have been strictly prohibited from making political contributions to federal candidates. Adam Hamilton and the Church of the Resurrection used church staff time, facilities, databases, and communication platforms to launch his political campaign while claiming ‘firewalls’ that were immediately ignored. No one is above the law, and the FEC must investigate and enforce the rules that protect the integrity of our elections.”

I know, I know, it’s pretty damn hilarious to see Republicans insisting they believe “strongly in the rule of law” while their Party’s leader seems to rack up new crimes by the day—while actively suppressing evidence of his potential past crimes—all while other Republicans stand back and allow him to do whatever the hell he wants. Republicans have no right pretending to care about the law.

But beyond that, do they have a point? Is the church breaking any rules by talking about Hamilton’s potential candidacy?

This is where it gets tricky. For example, as I mentioned, the church has an FAQ page to answer questions about Hamilton’s potential run for office… but the complaint says that itself is a problem (emphasis theirs):

On February 27, 2026, the Church added a page to its website headlined “Pastor Adam Hamilton Explores a Possible Run for the U.S. Senate.”4 This page includes a list of questions and answers concerning Hamilton’s potential candidacy, including “[w]ould church resources be used for the campaign?” The Church proceeded to answer the question concerning the use of church resources by using church resources to answer as follows…

The Church webpage also embeds Hamilton’s eleven-minute-and-thirty-five-second exploratory committee announcement video… which was first posted on the official YouTube channel for “Church of the Resurrection.”

They go on to say Resurrection must have “utilized an internal Church mailing list to email Hamilton’s statement to the Church’s members.”

Are these in-kind contributions to his campaign? If church staffers publish an FAQ on the church’s website, aren’t they, in a way, working on his campaign during work hours? And if you say you never use church resources to promote candidates… while using church resources to talk about a potential candidate… is that hypocritical?

That’s what the Kansas Republican Party is claiming. They’re asking the FEC to “move expeditiously to compel Respondents to comply with the law” if the law has been broken, and they want the FEC to impose any “appropriate sanctions” if necessary.

The complaint points to FEC fines that have been issued in other cases, but all of them involved cash donations made to actual candidates, situations that don’t apply here. It also says the church made “its corporate resources available to Adam Hamilton so that he could announce his exploratory campaign for U.S. Senate,” though one could argue he didn’t formally announce his campaign at all but rather explained to the church why he may be leaving.

I will say that I believe there’s a good-faith argument for Hamilton’s side here.

He’s the founder and face of this megachurch, and his sudden departure would be a huge deal. The best way to handle it is by being as transparent as possible about why he might leave, answering obvious questions in advance, and giving church leaders ample time to plan a future without him at the helm. It’s not like his consideration of a Senate run is a secret, nor does he want it to be.

If he was asking for campaign donations, or telling people to vote for him, or launching his campaign during a service, those would be pretty serious violations of the Johnson Amendment. He’s not doing any of that.

But maybe it’s easy to say that when right-wing pastors have gone so much further to actively promote Republicans from the pulpit. Their numerous violations of the Johnson Amendment—and their complete lack of consequences—have been well-documented at this point. So perhaps I’m judging Hamilton on a curve. I just don’t know if there’s a better way for him to explain to the congregation what he’s doing without going this far. He and his church seem to know there’s a line that must not be crossed, and what we’re seeing is his team getting as close as they can to that line without going over it.

(It would be ironic, too, if none of this mattered because Republicans have decided the Johnson Amendment can’t be enforced while they’re in power.)

The Republicans’ case would be a lot stronger if Hamilton had already jumped into the race. But he hasn’t. Telling people he’s seriously thinking about it just isn’t the same thing. And there’s a separate page for his exploratory committee that has no direct connection to the church at all. That page has a different, more political, video message:

I doubt the FEC will do anything. (As of now, it doesn’t even have the numbers to conduct serious investigations.) But the purpose of calling this out may simply be to connect “Adam Hamilton” with “ethics complaint” in the minds of voters. Anything to make sure Roger Marshall has an easier path to reelection.

For what it’s worth, Hamilton didn’t respond to my request for comment, but his spokesperson told a local news reporter that this complaint wouldn’t get anywhere and blamed it on Marshall himself:

“Roger Marshall would rather launch false attacks on people of faith - and the largest church in Kansas - than defend his record as a failed politician, because he knows Kansans are tired of politicians like him who aren’t listening and keep making things worse in Washington. Roger Marshall knows that if Adam Hamilton runs against him, Adam will win.”

Sounds like a statement from a candidate who has already made up his mind about running.

And that last line isn’t just bluster. A recent poll showed that Hamilton had very little name recognition among voters, but in a hypothetical matchup between Hamilton (as an Independent) and Marshall, Hamilton would come out on top. (The poll also showed Hamilton would lose if he ran as a Democrat.)

The church itself offered a more neutral explanation of its actions:

The communications cited in the GOP’s complaint are examples of how the church regularly communicates significant updates to congregants, Resurrection Church spokeswoman Cathy Bein told WORLD Tuesday in a statement. The church’s founding senior pastor is considering a possible career change after 35 years in ministry, which would have a major impact on the church, so congregants were informed, she added.

If Hamilton does indeed run, and if Democrats decide to back him instead of one of their own candidates, it could be one of the more interesting campaigns nationwide.

At a time when James Talarico is redefining what it means to be a Christian in Texas, and independent candidates in Nebraska and Maine are running effective campaigns, and when Kansas has seen a Democrat win a statewide gubernatorial race twice in a row now while rejecting a constitutional amendment banning abortion, the state is ripe for a major change. Especially if the Senate election is a referendum on Trump.

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