Woke megachurch pastor, Dem nominee called on congregation to repent for driving, eating beef

FIRST ON FOX: In Kansas, cows are king, but a Democrat trying to seize power once told his congregation to repent for eating beef and raising cattle.

Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee running to unseat Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., in the Sunflower State, for years led the largest United Methodist church in the nation. He would give sermons that Marshall charged were "woke," and counter to Kansans' values.

One such sermon, reviewed by Fox News Digital, saw Hamilton call on his congregation to repent over their carbon footprints.

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"That's what repentance means — I saw things differently, it changed my heart, and it changed my behavior," Hamilton said during a January 2020 sermon called, "What would Jesus say about climate change?"

"So what I'm calling you to today, and I'm calling myself to it, because I've been wasteful, I've done things that wasn't, you know, I didn't think about it, how it wasn't really good stewardship of the earth around me," he continued. "I'm calling us to repentance to say, ‘I realize that this has impact, even if it seems small, it has an impact on the world and future generations. And I feel badly about that, and I'm going to do something different from this time forward.’"

Despite Kansas’ 94-year history of being a ruby-red bastion for the GOP in the Senate, the race between Hamilton and Marshall has unexpectedly tightened in recent months as Republicans across the country face a sobering political environment.

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Kansas slipped from "Likely R" in Fox News’ Power Rankings to "Lean R," and Cook Political Report echoed the same shift, too.

"In a state with more cattle than people, Hamilton saying that Kansans need repent for eating too much beef and flip flopping on the Farm Bill proves he’d be just like every other liberal Democrat in the Senate," Marshall told Fox News Digital in a statement.

High fuel prices, particularly diesel in an agriculture-centric state like Kansas, spurred by President Donald Trump’s Iran war are giving voters anxiety, and expanding the map of battleground states that Republicans need to defend to maintain their majority in the Senate.

Hamilton's campaign countered to Fox News Digital that Marshall has "repeatedly introduced legislation to reduce emissions from cattle and claimed 'everyone's concerned about the methane production in the cattle industry.'"

"Marshall even bragged how the decline of the herd 'eliminated half of the methane gas produced from cattle already,'" Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for Hamilton, said. "As Adam said at the debate, Roger should repent for failing to stand up for Kansas cattle producers on tariffs, foreign imports, and skyrocketing diesel prices, and now he should repent for attacking Adam for something Roger Marshall said himself in the Senate. Kansas producers don't need lectures from someone who voted to put warning labels on hot dogs and bacon."  

Meanwhile, Hamilton’s sermon was part scripture, part PowerPoint presentation on how greenhouse gases occur and their impact on the environment. And during his 44-minute talk, Hamilton suggested that one of Kansas’ staple economic drivers, beef, was a major contributor to the problem.

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"Some of the things that we grow, because we like to eat them, like cattle, end up producing more carbon dioxide than other crops that we could grow, other forms of food that we could have," Hamilton said. "And so, in all of these ways, we are creating or adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in our world."

Cattle is a major industry for Kansas, which is the nation’s third-largest producer of beef, according to the Kansas Livestock Association. There are more heads of cattle in the state, just over 5.8 million, than people, with the state’s population sitting at roughly 2.9 million.

It provides a major cash influx for the state’s economy, too, with cattle farming and ranching producing tens of billions of dollars and employing over tens of thousands of Kansans.

"It is disappointing that a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kansas, one of the nation’s top beef-producing states, would make a statement like this to his parishioners about beef’s impact on the climate," Kansas Livestock Association Chief Executive Officer Matt Teagarden told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Beef is an important, nutritious part of the American diet, and cattle play a significant role in maintaining grassland health and conservation, while accounting for only 2% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions."

Still, six years ago, Hamilton was calling on his congregation to change their habits to reduce their carbon footprint.

"Now, you got to do everything you can to reduce your own usage of fossil fuels, but maybe changing your diet so that the things that you eat are requiring less production that creates methane and carbon dioxide and everything else," Hamilton said.